Black Mirror
by Petroica traversi
Summary: WWII AU: After surviving on the streets of Warsaw, and the living hell of Treblinka, can Kyle ever find happiness? A companion fic to The Well and the Lighthouse. Style, if you're patient.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This is a companion fic of sorts to my SPBB fic, The Well and the Lighthouse. You don't have to read that to enjoy this one, but later events might get a little confusing if you don't. Maybe. Anyway, warnings for... you know... the Holocaust. I'm not going to pull punches here.

Prologue

I was working at the hospital on the day the Germans began their invasion. I was not a doctor yet, at least not formally, but I had been working on my residency for nearly a year, and the hospital had become my home away from home. When the bombing of Warsaw began, we all took cover as best we could, but it wasn't to last. We were soon inundated with hundreds of wounded civilians, bleeding and broken. The waiting room was full of people missing limbs, men and women gushing blood all over the floor, mothers screaming as their babies died in their arms, and the bombs continued to fall around us, shaking the building and making the lights flicker. I barely held myself together during my shift. Though some experience with emergency situations was required for all medical students, most of my education had been in pediatrics, so I was completely out of my element, up to my elbows, literally and figuratively, in blood and gore.

It was a great relief when, after nearly 30 straight hours at the hospital, I was sent home, with the understanding that I must return after I'd rested. It was nearly midday when I left the hospital and made my way through the streets of Warsaw. The city was in chaos, people running around trying to find out whatever information they could, looking for lost family members and friends, while soldiers rushed by in full uniform, holding their rifles in their hands. I felt overwhelmed by all the commotion, and was glad it was a short walk to the apartment I shared with my parents and brother.

The situation at home wasn't much better. The moment I walked in the door my mother bombarded me with questions, to which I had no answers. I brushed her off, and went to sulk in the bedroom my brother and I shared, too exhausted from my shift at the hospital to deal with her hysterics.

We knew what an invasion meant for us, of course. If the Germans "annexed" Poland, my family and I would be in great danger. Anti-Semitism had always been a problem for the Jews of Poland, but in Warsaw we were somewhat protected from all that. Sure, we all ran into trouble from time to time, but it was nothing compared to what we'd heard was happening in Germany. At least under the Polish government we still had rights. The same could not be said for Jews living under German law.

I tried to put that out of my mind as I threw myself onto my bed, and I was almost asleep when my brother Ike sneaked into the bedroom. I ignored him, but I felt his eyes upon me as he sat down on my bed, and after a few silent minutes I rolled over to look at him.

"Are you ok?" he asked, looking uncharacteristically serious.

"Yeah," I said, my voice rough with exhaustion, "Are you?"

He shrugged and looked away, staring out of the window with a pensive look upon his face.

"They're talking about sending me away," he said, finally.

"What?" I gasped, sitting up. Ike refused to look at me.

"I'm not... you know... my real parents, they weren't Jewish. I don't look like a Jew. Mom and dad seem to think they can get me some forged papers, and send me across to France, to live with some people they know."

I stared at him silently for a minute, a mixture of emotions rushing through my head. There was anger, to be sure, and from the way Ike was looking at me I'm sure that's what he was afraid of. But I was also concerned for him. We had never really discussed the fact that he was adopted, but I knew there had always been times in which he hadn't really felt like a part of the family. And now he was being sent away, because he looked nothing like us.

"I suppose it wasn't even suggested that I go with you?" I asked, hesitantly.

"Kyle, please," he said, smiling finally, "Have you looked in the mirror? Red hair alone is not enough to make you look like a goy. I mean, have you seen your nose?"

"Alright, Ike," I said, my anger quickly resurfacing.  
"And you're scrawny, and you wear glasses, and you're in intellectual. Need I go on? You might as well walk around with a giant Star of David painted on your head. You're practically a walking stereotype."

"Yeah, ok, I get it, I will never be able to pass as anything but Jewish. Ok."

He grinned at me as I glared at him, and I laid back down with a huff. I was surprised when he laid down beside me. We hadn't shared a bed since we were very young, and I watched him curiously as he made himself comfortable next to me, reaching over cautiously to put his hand on my shoulder.

"I'm scared," he said in that very straightforward manner of his. I had always liked his ability to speak what was on his mind, but at times like this it was unnerving, because everyone else was trying to dance around the truth.

"Of what? Being sent away to safety?" I asked, jealously.

He rolled his eyes and patted my head condescendingly.

"Yes, Kyle, of being sent away to safety. Terrifying. No. Traveling to France alone? What if I don't make it through the border? What if the Nazis figure out that my papers are fake, and whoops, there I go, off to some labor camp?"

"You're smart," I said, "I'm sure if you run into trouble you'll be able to get out of it."

"Yeah, but... you know... I'm worried about you, too. And mom and dad. What will happen to you? If it's bad enough that I'm being sent away, then whatever's in store for you guys isn't really something I want you to have to go through."

My heart was racing as he said this, but I had always tried to put on a brave face for my brother.

"We'll be ok," I said as I closed my eyes once more, knowing full well that nothing was going to be ok once Poland surrendered.

I'm sure Ike saw right through my lie, but he patted me on the shoulder, before leaving me to sleep.

He was gone before the week was over.

Warsaw surrendered not too long after that, and we knew our fate, whatever it may be, was sealed.


	2. Chapter 2

The truth of the matter is that nothing I tell you can even begin to express the despair and misery in which my people, and the other victims of the Nazi regime, lived. I can try, of course, and I will, because I feel as though it's important. But unless you were there... unless you saw the corpses littering the streets, the piles of refuse, and the children digging through them for scraps of food, unless you felt the blows aimed at you by the Germans for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and felt the terror of not knowing if you'd live for another day, there's no real way you can completely understand how it felt to be there, living in the Warsaw Ghetto.

We knew from the start that it would be bad, of course. From the moment the Germans took over they began to impose restrictions upon us. We had to wear an armband with a Star of David on it at all times, to clearly mark us as Jews. More than anything this marked us as targets for the German soldiers and Polish citizens alike. Suddenly we had no rights, and they could do to us whatever they pleased. Jews all over Warsaw suddenly became victims of beatings, robberies, rape, and forced work, with no options for retribution. Fighting back only earned you a bullet in the head. There were no longer any laws left to protect us. So what were we to do?

Then, suddenly, we were barred from going to the movies, eating at most restaurants, and shopping in most stores. Signs popped up everywhere informing us as to how unwelcome we were.

Next the laws came which barred us from owning businesses, and most Jews were forced out of work. I was fortunate that doctors were allowed to continue working, but I was still a student, and had yet to earn my license. The hospital in which I had been working saw no option but to release me, but I managed to pick up work at the Jewish hospital, which is one of the only reasons I survived my time in the ghetto.

My father was equally lucky. He lost his job as a lawyer, but managed to secure a position in the Judenrat, the Jewish council that governed Jewish life in Warsaw, under the command of the Germans. He despised working for them, but his only other option was unemployment, which lead to certain death. It was through his connections that I got my job at the hospital, and, after we were confined to the ghetto and being employed became a necessity for survival, my mother found work in the post office. We were very fortunate, but even the privileged suffered once the walls of the ghetto went up.

It was in autumn of 1940 when we heard we'd be rounded up and moved into a tiny part of Warsaw, not nearly large enough to hold the city's Jewish population, much less the refugees from other parts of Poland that were constantly streaming into the city. There had been rumors of a ghetto before, but the confirmation of those rumors was still a rather devastating blow. We had heard what had happened to the Jews of Lodz in their "resettlement"; mass shootings, disease, and starvation, and we all hoped that we could avoid the same fate.

In retrospect our optimism seems rather foolish, but it was the only thing we had left to keep us going.

Our apartment was not within the confines of the ghetto, and as such, we knew we would have to move. And once word got out that our neighborhood was to be a part of the "Aryan" area of the city, we were inundated with people hoping to take over our apartment. Some offered swaps for crummy rooms that were within the future ghetto's walls, while others simply made demands, threatening us with beatings if we did not comply. We managed to fight everyone off to bide our time, until the day a German officer came to our door.

My mother and I were the only ones home when he arrived, coming through the door without knocking or announcing himself in any way. One minute we were in the kitchen, discussing our options, and the next thing we knew there was an SS officer standing in the doorway, examining the room with a look of boredom on his face.

"I think this will do," he said to a man following him, who I assumed to be his valet.

We stared at him in shocked silence as he examined the kitchen cabinets, unsure as to what he meant, or what we should do. Finally he turned to us.

"You have 30 minutes to get out," he said, sneering at us, "You may take no furniture, only your personal items."

Most people in our situation would have kept their mouth shut, complying in the subservient manner that the Nazis expected from Jews. My mother was not most people.

"Now wait just a minute!" she said, "The deadline to move into the ghetto hasn't come yet, and this is still our apartment!"

The officer regarded her calmly, before walking across the kitchen floor toward her, pulling his gun out during his approach. I could only stand by in mute horror as he hit her with it, and kicked her repeatedly in the stomach and face after she collapsed on the floor. I wanted to shout at him, to run at him with my fists flying, but I knew that would be the last mistake I ever made. The man rained blows upon her until she stopped moving, and then stepped back, calmly straightening his jacket.

"Now you have 10 minutes," he said, turning to me with a smile, "I suggest you collect your belongings and your useless whore mother before I shoot you both."

Nine minutes and 55 seconds later I was making my way down the stairs, with as many bags as I could carry slung across my shoulders, and my mother leaning against me for support, sobbing and moaning from the pain.

We slowly made our way to her sister's apartment down the street, where I left her in my cousin's care before making my way back to my father's office to relay the bad news. He took it in stride, as he did most things, saying we would have to stay with my mother's family until we found a place within the future ghetto, or until we ran out of time. He then sent me on my way, telling me to look after my mother's wounds, which, of course, I would have done anyway.

Being evicted with no warning was bad enough, but what it really meant to us was that we'd lost our bargaining chip. We needed every advantage we could get if we were to survive, and we had all hoped that we could trade our apartment for a decent place to stay, instead of having nothing to offer. Losing that put us at a distinct disadvantage, and as the days wore on, I could see the worry in my parents' expressions as the likelihood of finding somewhere to live was growing slimmer and slimmer. A solution did not present itself until two days before the deadline, when I ran into a friend of mine on the street.

I had met Rebekah Cotswold during her brother Mark's brief stint in public education. How he had convinced his very religious parents to allow him to attend public school was beyond me, but one afternoon I had gone to his apartment to study with him, and that was where I met Rebekah. She was pretty, and intelligent, and I was drawn to her immediately. I had been the first boy to kiss her, long before I realized that chaste kisses were as far as I ever wanted to go with girls. It was years later, when I kissed her brother, that I realized why. I later lost my virginity to him, though I never told Rebekah that. She simply assumed that he and I were good friends.

I always enjoyed her company, although recent events had changed her normal jittery disposition into full-on anxiety.

"How are you doing?" I asked as I approached her, and she glanced around nervously, biting her lip.

"Fine, just fine," she said, rather unconvincingly, "Is your family moved yet?"

"Ah, no, we're still looking for a place. My father and I have been busy with work, and I think my mother believes if she just keeps putting it off, it won't really happen."

"Yeah, it's hard to believe this is all really happening," she said, still watching the people pass us on the street with a fair amount of distress, "What about Ike? What's he doing?"

"Oh, uh, this and that. He's pretty busy too. How's Mark?"

"Fine, fine," she said distractedly, "I'd better be going, though. Don't want to get into trouble."

She glanced significantly at the band stitched to her sleeve, and I nodded. Lingering on the streets was simply asking for trouble if you wore the Star of David on your arm.

We made our goodbyes, and I didn't expect anything to come of our brief meeting, so I was surprised the next day when Mark stopped by our temporary home.

I was concerned when I opened the door to the apartment to reveal him, thinking perhaps he was bearing bad news about his sister, or something. But he laughed at the look on my face, and slapped me on the arm.

"Nothing to worry about," he said, smiling, "But my parents sent me to discuss something with your family."

I nodded, though my fears were not allayed, and let him in.

"I have an offer to make you," he said, after my father, mother, and I sat down at the kitchen table with him, "I understand you are working for the Judenrat?" he said, addressing my father.

"Yes," he answered warily.

"I assume, then, that you might be granted certain... protections?"

"We live under the same laws that you do, Mark."

"Of course," Mark said, "But, for example, both you and Kyle have jobs. And the impression I've gotten is that those who work for the Judenrat were privy to certain information before the general public. Deportations, that sort of thing."

"Sometimes, yes, but... well I'm not sure what you're getting at," my father replied.

"I think we could help each other. My family has a spare room in their flat. You'd all have to share, unfortunately, but that seems to be the way things are going, anyway. And our flat is nicer than most of the ones you'll find this close to the deadline. My parents think they'd benefit from having two employed men living there, especially if one works for the Judenrat. Perhaps if you hear of a job opening you could help me and my father out, for example. In exchange you'd have a decent room in a decent apartment, as opposed to the hovels I've seen filling up with multiple families. So, it's a win-win. There wouldn't be room for your extended family, though."

"They've already found a place," my mother said before glancing at my father to gauge his interest in the offer.

My uncle had found a room the previous week, and in his search he'd found that what Mark was saying was true; most of the rooms left were small and filthy. He ended up agreeing to a 10 x 10 room for the four of them, in a flat that had no electricity, and shared a bathroom with the entire floor of the building. I'd spent a great deal of time at the Cotswolds', and it was a decent size, and very modern. Not that that would matter down the line.

"I think it's a good idea," I said, knowing that without some kind of a push my parents would keep holding out for more luxurious accommodations, which they would never find. I, for one, didn't want to end up living in some cramped room with a dozen strangers, much less on the streets.

My father gave me a look, apparently not appreciating my input, and then sighed heavily before burying his face in his hands.

"Ok," he mumbled.

"Great!" Mark said, getting to his feet, "I'll go inform my parents, then. They said you can move in tomorrow, if you accepted our offer."

He held out his hand, which my father shook, and then I showed him to the door.

"It's going to be weird, you know... living with you," I ventured, because despite having slept with each other on occasion when we were teenagers, we had never been anything more than friends. As far as I knew he was still dating a man he'd met a few years ago at the synagogue.

"We could share a room, if that would be better than sharing with your parents," he said.

I'm sure the blush that rose to his cheeks was matched by my own.  
"I don't mean it that way," he said, quietly enough that my parents wouldn't overhear, "Just, you know... you might be more comfortable."

"Of course," I said.

"One of our cousins will be staying in Rebekah's room, so the flat will be a bit cramped. I think we can all manage it, though. But... they don't... no one in my family knows about me, you know," he said, leaning in close.

"Ike's the only one I've ever told," I said, realizing in that moment just how much I missed him. He was a pain in the ass sometimes, but he was the only person I'd ever trusted with my secrets. I hoped, wherever he was, that he was doing ok.

"Where is he, anyway?" Mark asked, "Rebekah said you seemed nervous when she asked..."

"I'll tell you later. He won't be coming with us, though."

Mark gave me a suspicious look, before smiling.  
"Ok. Well, I'll see you tomorrow, then," and with that he made his way down the hall.

Though I was glad my parents had finally agreed to something, and that our accommodations would be better than many others', I was still understandably upset about what was to come. Though many of the people I knew believed the lies the Nazis fed us, I most definitely did not. I knew what was coming was going to be bad. But even I had no idea just how bad it would be.

Since our brutal eviction the previous week had left us with few possessions, we had nothing to pack. So we simply joined the streams of Jews moving through the streets, with all their worldly possessions in their arms or in carts, and made our way into the ghetto. The sheer amount of people trying to find some space within the walls of the ghetto was overwhelming to me, and I was very glad when we reached the Cotswolds' apartment, where we were welcomed with open arms.

The next day the walls were sealed behind us, and most of the people contained within them would never know freedom again. We would all do the best we could to get by, but out of the nearly 400,000 of us living under the cramped, crowded conditions, only a handful would survive. It was only through sheer luck that I was one of them.

XXX

Big thanks to hollycomb and sekritomg for helping me out with this. You guys are great.

Reviews are appreciated.


	3. Chapter 3

Life in the ghetto was dehumanizing, at best. The worst thing was walking down the street and seeing children, mostly orphans, laying or sitting around like tiny skeletons, starved to the point where they didn't even look human anymore. At first I did whatever I could to help them – give them scraps of food, or any spare clothing I had – but as time went on the survival of myself and my family became more of a priority. It was the same for everyone. It seemed as if the supply of starving children increased exponentially, but compassion toward fellow human beings began to run dry as we all found ourselves in life or death situations. Handing out food to orphans might not seem like a huge sacrifice, but after a while very few people had anything to spare. Giving handouts one day might mean starving to death the next, and we all seemed to lose our consciences as fear took over.

Children were not the only victims, of course. There were many people living on the streets, each growing thinner and more ragged by the day. It was not uncommon to step over bodies of the deceased as you walked down the street, and after only a short amount of time in the ghetto, most people learned to ignore the remains of these casualties. There was a sense among the general population that if you did not block out what was really happening, you would go mad. So these corpses soon became just another dismal part of the background, carted off each morning to a mass grave in the cemetery, only to be replaced with new corpses on the street by the next day.

There were, of course, small bits of humanity peering out from behind the wall of despair. There were soup kitchens, for example, which were supplied almost entirely by the small children who sneaked across the barricade to the Aryan side of the wall to smuggle food into the ghetto. And there were those who tried to keep our culture alive, running illegal newpapers, schools, even organizing symphonies. If you knew where to look, it was possible to seem small glimmers of of hope, and despite everything there were still good people around.

One of my favorite people in the ghetto was a man known as Pan Doktor, who ran an orphanage, and with whom I had the pleasure of working in my spare time. Within months of moving into the ghetto, my parents and the Cotswolds had agreed to allow two more families to move into our apartment, and it had become so unbearably cramped that I spent as little time at home as I could. So when I was not working at the hospital, I often found myself entertaining the children at the orphanage, and offering whatever medical services I could provide with my limited resources. My life was as far from ideal as it could be, but my time spent helping others was likely the only thing that kept me sane.

X

Despite having the most resources available to him, my father was the first victim of the ghetto in our apartment, about five months after we'd been living there.

I came home from the hospital one day to find my mother sitting in the kitchen, looking nervous.

"Your father is in bed," she said, "Go see if you can help him."

He was asleep on the mattress on the floor, and when I approached him he opened his eyes blearily at me, staring in confusion.

"How are you feeling?" I asked, sitting next to him on the mattress. He looked clammy and uncomfortable. He stared at me for a moment, and then sighed regretfully.

"I know what's wrong with me, Kyle, and I think you do too," he said, taking my hand and placing it over his forehead. He was burning up.

When he pushed his open shirt aside, I could see that he had rosy spots on his chest, and his stomach looked distended. All symptoms of Typhoid Fever.

"Fuck," I muttered, pulling his shirt closed.

"Language, Kyle," he said mildly, and when I glanced at his face he was laying back, looking almost corpse-like. I tried to shake that thought from my head, with no success.

"Do you want to go to the hospital?" I asked, getting to my feet.

"Can they do anything for me?"

"No... not really. Nothing I couldn't do here at home, anyway," I said, honestly. There was very little that could be done about Typhoid Fever anyway, without the right resources, none of which we had in the ghetto. Either he'd get better, or he'd die. That's all there was to it.

"I'd rather stay here," he said, "Dying in a crowded hospital room seems undignified."

"You might not die. It's not always fatal," I said, but he just shook his head.

A week later, he was gone.

X

The weeks blurred into each other for quite some time. I think anyone who has experienced a great loss knows what I mean when I talk about the mindless blur that time becomes when you're consumed with grief. Nothing seems real, and when you look back at that period at a later date, you can't remember much of what happened. It's as though your brain just shuts itself off.

I know I was still working at the hospital, and I know I was still volunteering at the orphanage, but otherwise most of what took place during a great part of that year is just a blur to me.

My mother took to praying a lot, which I thought was ridiculous, since God had obviously forsaken us.

When we had any time alone, which was rare, I allowed Mark to give me comfort in the only way he could. I didn't love him, nor did he love me, but a few moments of mindless bliss was a welcome reprieve from the devastation that continued to escalate around us.

Life went on, sort of. New residents were being shipped in on a daily basis, and the overcrowding would have been unbearable, except that more and more people died every day. A brisk round of Typhus went through the ghetto, killing more people than I can count. It was yet another thing we could not treat at the hospital, which made my job more and more frustrating.

And if the Typhus didn't kill you, you were lucky if you didn't starve to death. Sometimes you'd see the same people on the street for weeks on end, growing thinner and thinner as time went on. There was one man who sticks out in my mind. When he moved to the ghetto he had a wife and four children. The wife died of some disease, and after that the man spent all of his time on the street with his children, begging for help and singing, "_Ich dank dir Got, az ich bin a Yid_." I thank God that I am a Jew.

One by one his children died of starvation, and he was left alone. His suffering was unbearable to me, but there was nothing that could be done.

It wasn't as if we didn't all have our share of problems. The people living in our apartment began to drop like flies. Typhus killed half of them, and several others were shot by the SS for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The dead were often replaced by new people who were searching for a place to stay, but many of them died as well. Of the original 16 people who had been living in the flat, only Mark, Rebecca, my mother, and I remained.

The day Rebecca was shot was one of the most difficult of my life, at least up to that point. I was working at the hospital when she was brought in, but I hadn't even known she was there until I found her bleeding out on the floor of a hallway. I did everything I could to save her, but it was no good. Despite my good intentions she died in my arms, with a stream of blood painting her face. I was heartbroken. And I had to be the one to bring Mark the bad news.

It went as badly as could be expected. She was his only remaining family, after all, and they had been very close their whole lives. Still, life in the ghetto was so awful that there was an underlying feeling of relief, and maybe even jealousy. Death had become seen as a welcome escape from our misery, and there were many who sought it out just to end their suffering.

"I want to be with her," Mark said to me, and though I understood why, I held him back from doing anything rash. His sorrow turned to anger, and we ended up having sex so violent that I was left bleeding from it. Still, I felt so guilty that she had died in my own hospital that I didn't complain.

It was only a few weeks later that I came home to find my mother looking despondent, and though any number of things could have been wrong, I had a gut feeling as to what the matter was.

"Mark's been killed," she said, "One of my friends saw it happen. He was forced to clear a street with some other men, and when they were finished the SS officers lined them all up against a wall and opened fire on them. There was no reason for it..." she trailed off, staring at the wall as if it had answers for her. I knew she was thinking that the same could happen to me some day.

I realized at that point how very old she looked. Living in the ghetto had aged her so much in such a short time span, and my heart hurt to see her looking so worn down. I know the loss of my father was the biggest blow for her, and she had never really recovered from it. I was all she had left, and I didn't know if she'd survive if she lost me, too.

I took the news about Mark as well as could be expected, and I spent the rest of the day in the bed we'd shared, clutching his pillow and feeling sorry for myself. Having him around had been a great comfort to me, and I would miss him very much. Still, none of it surprised me. I half-expected to have the same fate as him, as many of the boys our age had been eliminated in such a manner. There was no rhyme or reason to the Nazis' treatment of those of us in the ghetto... Death would come to all of us one way or another, so perhaps it was best to take such a blasé approach to it.

Some time in July of 1942, the rumors began to spread that the Nazis were to eliminate us all, once and for all. Some scoffed at this idea, since many people in the Warsaw ghetto were used as slave labor in the factories, including those that supplied the Nazi war machine, but many of us believed it. After all, wasn't that what they'd slowly been doing to us all along? There was talk of escaping to the Aryan side of the wall, but few considered it a real option, as Jews who were caught over there were shot immediately.

It wasn't much safer in the ghetto, though. In the weeks leading up to the deportations, the SS men went from building to building, shooting down entire families as they pleased. It was the so-called "intelligentsia" that was targeted most: teachers, lawyers, businessmen, and even doctors. The Nazis wanted to create panic and confusion within the ghetto, and it worked very well. I remember running home from work every day, terrified that I'd find nothing but corpses in my apartment.

It was somewhere around this time that notices started to go up, telling us we would be "resettled" somewhere out East. If we went voluntarily to the _Umschlagplatz, _the place at which we would be loaded onto the trains, we would be given 2 kilos of bread and 1 kilo of jam, if these promises were to be believed. Apparently the Nazis were betting that our desperate hunger would make us stupid. But those who didn't go voluntarily would be forced to go anyway, so there were some who took them up on their offer.

Hospital staff was exempted, which was only a small relief to me, since I knew it was only a matter of time before we would no longer be useful. Factory workers also had a temporary respite, and thousands of people scrambled to get a job, and to get the right paperwork that would supposedly save them. The rules changed every day, and it was so difficult to keep up with them that even though who had valid employment would often end up on the trains. It was unsettling to see the once-crowded streets become emptier by the day, as more and more buildings were completely cleared out, their residents sent off or shot, and their belongings looted or scattered about like refuse.

There were rumors of a resistance movement, which gave us all hope, despite the fact that we all knew what our ultimate fate would be. We didn't know where these deportations were actually taking people, but we all knew the claims of resettlement were nothing but a ruse.

Throughout the entire time I'd spent in the ghetto, I'd resolved myself to never give up. These Nazi bastards wanted to break all our spirits, and despite everything I'd gone through, I fought as hard as I could not to let that happen to me. It was in August that I finally broke.

On August 5th, the orphanage at which I had volunteered was surrounded by SS men, and Pan Doktor and his staff were notified that they were to be deported. Instead of letting on that he knew what would happen, he told the children in his care that they would be going on a trip to the countryside, leaving the barren wasteland of the ghetto for green fields. He had them all dress in their finest clothes, and he went with them to the _Umschlagplatz, _maintaining the calm, kind demeanor for which he had become known. He was offered sanctuary several times, as he was actually a well-known author of childrens' books, but he refused each time, saying that he would not abandon the children. They were all loaded onto the trains together, never to be heard from again.

I was depressed from this, but it was nothing compared to what happened only a few days later.

Anyone who remained in the ghetto was ordered to stay at their places of work at all times. I worked, ate, and slept at the hospital, but like many people, I would often sneak out at night to visit people and ferry around supplies. Usually I would go to the factory at which my mother had been hired after she lost her previous job. One night, she was gone. I frantically asked around, but was ignored by nearly everyone. That was typical of life in the ghetto, as there were often panicked family members screaming into peoples' faces about the fate of their relatives. Finally one of my mother's friends pulled me aside and told me what happened.

Earlier that day, the SS had made the usual rounds of all the factories. They rounded up dozens of people at random, as they were wont to do, and took them into the courtyard and shot them. My mother was one of the day's victims.

The woman who told me this seemed sympathetic, but I walked away from her without even saying anything. I don't remember going back to the hospital, but I awoke the next morning on the cot on which I usually slept, my face a teary mess, and my fingers bloody from where I'd bitten my nails off.

I was done. There was nothing left for me in Warsaw, and though I didn't know what would await me at the other end of the railroad tracks, I went to the _Umschlagplatz_ on my own, ready to embrace resettlement, or death, or whatever I might have coming to me.

The car they loaded us into was full to the brim with people. Once it was full the doors were shut, and the windows were barred, but we remained at the station for several hours, locked up tightly. It was so hot and stuffy that none of us could breathe properly, and there was no room for any of us to sit down, either. I was crushed against a wall, pushed and crowded by those who were trying to get some fresh air through the cracks in the wood panels. I didn't care. I had a pretty good idea as to what would happen to us, and I didn't even struggle anymore.

As the train finally pulled away from the station, I heard the old man's voice in my head: _"Ich dank dir Got, az ich bin a Yid."_

_XXX_

A/N: So much to say here. First, an apology for the lag between chapters. I'm a full-time student and I work at 4am 5-6 days a week, so I have very little free time to devote to this. Second, um, oh what to say about this chapter. I hope I did a good job of balancing what really happened in the Warsaw Ghetto and making it at least moderately entertaining? Nothing I could write can even begin to do this situation justice, but if you're interested in the subject matter, my main resource for information was a book called Words to Outlive Us, which is a collection of first-hand accounts about the ghetto. The story of Pan Doktor (whose real name was Janusz Korczak) is true, as is the one of the man who sang "Ich dank dir Got, as ich bin a Yid." I tried make everything else as historically accurate as possible.

Thanks for reading!


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: I am really pretty pleased with this chapter, but any kind of feedback would be very helpful. I tried some new things and I'm curious to see if anyone picks up on them. Also this fic might be put on hold for a bit until I make some headway into my SPBB fic.

XXXXXXX

We were stuck on the train for three solid days, waiting, waiting, waiting. I was impatient, as I often was, and as time wore on my nonchalance toward my impending doom wore off, and I became anxious once more. There was talk amongst my follow "passengers" as to where we would end up. Many believed the lies they were told about resettlement, and spoke optimistically about our destination. I was irritated by their stupidity. Though I had no idea what horrors awaited us at the time, I was sure that it would not be some lovely pastoral setting, as many seemed to hope. The Nazis didn't want us to till their fields, or run their factories, or whatever these people believed. They wanted us dead. I tried to be nice about the whole thing, I really did, because having worked as a doctor I understood that sometimes people just needed to hold onto whatever hope they had. But it seemed ignorant to me, and I would rather prepare myself for the worst, rather than cling to fantasies.

But of course, as our journey went on, with many long delays that saw our cars stopped for hours in the heat, people began to lose their hope. There wasn't a place in which we could relieve ourselves, so we were forced to squat in a dark corner and try not to soil the shoes of those around us. No one could lay down to sleep because there wasn't enough space, and many people became delirious if they were unable to sleep standing up, or leaning on a wall or a neighbor. Those who fell were usually trampled to death.

Worse than the indignity and exhaustion was the lack of food and water. A person can go days without food, although those who were already starving to death from their time in the ghetto were significantly less hardy, but no water? In a train car parked in the hot sun, crowded with a hundred people standing elbow to elbow and no air circulation, dehydration was quick to kill.

As people became corpses, our instincts from the ghetto kicked in, and we coordinated together to move them to one side, stacking them as best we could against a wall. It might sound horrible, but it gave the survivors a little more space, for which we were all grateful... Until the dead had their revenge with their stench, and the flies they attracted.

When we finally reached our destination my heart froze in terror, but I was relieved, too. I was ready to flee the hot, smelly Hell on wheels I'd inhabited for three days. Had I only known then what I know now.

The departing "passengers" blink in the harsh sunlight, their eyes so used to the dim light of the train car. There is a little station house, and above it is a sign that says "Treblinka". There is no time to take this in, however, because as soon as you exit the car, the officers begin to yell at you.

"Out! Everybody out! Leave the heavy baggage! It will be delivered later!"

I had brought no possessions with me, and so while some were fretting over their belongings, I simply climb out of the car, hoping for fresh air, but the air is anything but fresh. It smells like the streets of the Warsaw ghetto, a hundredfold. The stench of death makes me freeze in my tracks, but the crowd behind me shoves me along.

There are men with whips and pistols directing us, and we pass through a gate, into a square with wooden barracks on either side. We are all forced to strip, right there in the square, men and women alike. Everyone is shaking with nerves, eying each other with apprehension. The children begin to cry, and so do some of the adults, although they are admonished by their neighbors, because everyone still wants to pretend that things will be ok. The women who are reluctant to strip are attacked by guards, who tear their clothing off them as they scream and try to shield their bodies. Everyone averts their eyes. Then the men are sent to the right, and women and children to the left. Nobody knows what any of this means.

A guard walks by me and orders me to the side, tells me to get dressed again. Who am I to argue when he's waving a gun around? I grab my clothing and hat from the pile I'd thrown them in, and hastily put them back on again. The man yells something in German that I don't quite catch to another man who is wearing the Star of David on his sleeve. A Jew, but he clearly works for these people, and he waves me toward him. I go without hesitation, glad to be free from the chaos of the crowds.

"You're lucky," the man says to me in Yiddish, "But not that lucky, I suppose, since you are here."

"What do you mean?" I ask, struggling to keep up with him as he leads me away.

"Sergeant Schiffner has been looking for a housekeeper. You are to work for him."

"Housekeeper? What?"

The man stops abruptly in his tracks and turns to me sharply.  
"Can you clean?" he asks.

"Well, yes."

"Do laundry? Relay messages? Cook?"

I hesitated, "I don't know much about cooking, to be honest."

"Well, you'd better learn, Red, or you'll meet the same fate as the others."

Of course, I had no idea what that meant yet, but it was ominous enough that when he stalked off again, I hurried behind him.

I was led to what looked like some sort of administration building, and locked into the basement with no explanation. I wasn't too happy to be shut back into a dark space after three days on that God-forsaken train, but at least it was cool and quiet down there. I found a rickety-looking cot in the corner, and decided to try and sleep while I waited for whatever I was waiting for.

I was awoken some time later when someone kicked the cot over, knocking me onto the floor.

There was a man standing in front of me, and when I looked up and realized that he was an SS officer, I quickly got to my feet, taking off my hat and keeping my eyes on the ground, as we were supposed to do.

"Good," he said, but I still didn't look up, "Upstairs, now."

I followed him and he showed me around his small apartment, pointing out things like the broom closet, and where the pots and pans were hung. I was furious and humiliated at being reduced to some kind of housewife. I was a doctor, not a servant! But arguing with an SS officer produced the same results every time, and in the last few days I'd regained my will to live, if only out of spite for the people who had done this to me. So I didn't argue, because I didn't want to die. I just did as I was told, and hoped it would be good enough to earn another day of life. Maybe if I was lucky this man would choke to death on something I cooked. One can always hope.

A routine was quickly established. The Sergeant left the apartment fairly early in the morning, and I was expected to have his breakfast ready before he left. Then I cleaned, made his bed, did laundry, so on and so forth. He'd given me all the necessary supplies, including a cookbook, which was fortunate since I really had no idea how to cook before I left Warsaw. Usually I was allowed to eat the leftovers, so I always made a bit extra to keep myself well fed, although my cooking tasted horrible to me when compared to the delicious meals my mother had once made. I tried not to think about it.

When the Sergeant came back in the evening, he expected me to make myself scarce, which was fine by me. After making sure he had everything he needed, I'd retreat down to the basement and hide out there until the next morning.

I felt I'd lost my whole identity working for him. They'd shaved my head to prevent the spreading of lice. I had wanted my whole life to work as a doctor, and here I was shining some German bastard's muddy boots. I rarely saw anyone but him, and I felt too much like some spoiled little prince to associate with the other inmates when I'd leave the SS officers' barracks. Hell, the Sergeant even referred to me as either, "Jew," or, "Boy," and everyone else called me, "Red," so it was as if Kyle Broflovski didn't exist anymore.

I was mostly left alone, but occasionally the Sergeant would come down to the basement and beat me until I could hardly stand. It was never provoked by anything I could see, and I was always expected to carry out my duties a usual, even with my face bruised and my body aching. But despite the black eyes and bloody noses I'd wind up with, I felt relatively lucky. I'd learned very quickly what was going on in the other parts of the camp, and it was worse than I had thought.

Had I not been selected to be a servant, I would have been sent into a chamber with fake shower heads in the ceiling. Then great engines would have pumped carbon monoxide into the chamber, and I would have died a slow, agonizing death from suffocation. The concept was difficult to wrap my head around, but to the Germans and the men working in the camp, it was all so routine.

The men went first, while the women and children stood outside, waiting. They could hear the sounds of agony from within the chamber, so even though they were told it was simply a shower, they knew better. But there was no way out. To try and turn back would mean being torn apart by dogs, or being beaten to death, or shot. The victims were like caged animals, not knowing what to do in their panic.

Not everyone died in the chamber, either. Amongst the heaps of blue and purple corpses were always a few survivors, gasping for air as the chamber doors opened. It didn't matter, though. They would either be shot, or thrown into the pits with all the corpses, where they would be burned alive.

So yes, I might sound flippant when I say being beaten on occasion wasn't so bad, but I mean it. I imagined myself in those chambers all the time. Smashed against thousands of others, terrified, and gasping for air. People panicking, doing anything to escape the dying masses. Pushing others to the floor, trying to climb up the fucking walls, anything to stay alive, to keep breathing, to escape the pain. In my nightmares I would be one of the survivors. I would go through the ten or twenty minutes of suffocation, only to burn to death on the pyres. To this day I still have those nightmares, even though Treblinka is far behind me.

So I found I could not complain about my arrangement with the Sergeant, which lasted for several months. But at some point he tired of me, or found someone better, or something. I never knew what exactly prompted my exile from his quarters, but I was sent to work in the camp.

He must have been a little fond of me, or at least thought I was a capable worker, because usually servants that were dismissed were simply shot. For a while I was sent to work on the team that sorted the clothing and belongings of the dead.

When there were transports coming into the camp, times were relatively good. Because, you see, those of us who were not killed had access to all the things the victims had brought with them, and that included food. Of course, we would all be killed if we were caught taking anything as we sorted through the piles of the items left behind. But that never stopped a single person. We ate like kings. Whenever we wanted something new to wear, we took it. We ferreted away any money or gold we thought would go unnoticed, because everyone had escape in mind, and to escape you needed money for food or bribery. It was all very practical. The rightful owners of these things were dead, so it all belonged to us, as long as we could get away with taking it. All we had to do was ignore our consciences. With the food and nice clothing we'd steal, most of us looked better during these times than we ever had on the outside, despite the fact that we had to keep our hair shaved off to prevent the spread of lice. As if that helped.

But there were lulls in the transports, and during these times we were malnourished, and still worked hard. If you did not sort the items fast enough, you were whipped. Even if you did sort the items fast enough, you were whipped. If you looked too happy, you were whipped. If you looked too sad, you were whipped. So on and so forth. You should see my scars.

At night you would lay in the bunks, too exhausted to move, but you could not sleep because the fleas and lice would constantly be biting you. The blankets we all had (which were also stolen from the transports) were always stained with blood, and had to be replaced on a weekly basis.

If all that wasn't enough, a round of typhus swept through the camp, killing some, while simply incapacitating others. We jokingly called the disease "Treblinka", and nearly everyone had it at some point, in varying levels.

One evening we were in the barracks, settling in for the night, and suddenly I became convinced that the man in the bunk next to mine had stolen a piece of bread I'd hidden under my bedroll. I hadn't been feeling well all day, and the loss of this bread (which, in retrospect, I'm not even sure ever existed) enraged me. Though he was twice my size I tried to attack the accused, and was mercifully pulled away by some of the other men before I could land a blow. The man I'd accused was not known for his kindness or patience, and anyone he'd ever fought had come out of it with a few missing teeth. The men who'd stopped me took one look at my face and felt my forehead. "He's got Treblinka," they said. One of the symptoms was delirium, which was often one of the first symptoms of this particular strain. And so I was sent to the infirmary for a week... a week which I do not remember, for the most part.

I weaved in and out of consciousness, and when I was awake I had hallucinations of my mother. She'd come to me and put a cool cloth against my forehead, and when she'd leave again I'd cry out for her. When my fever finally broke I noticed the odd looks I received from the men in the other bunks, and I couldn't quite tell if it was pity or annoyance. I assume the latter, because when I went back to work everyone knew I'd cried for my dead mother while I was sick, and several of the men mocked me for it. Still, others seemed happy to see me back on my feet, so I ignored the jokes hurled at me. It's not as if I could have helped it, anyway, but I would think that since everyone there had lost all their loved ones as well, they might be a little more understanding. But compassion is hard to come by in a death camp, I suppose.

One morning at roll call, only a few weeks after my recovery, several men were selected to be transferred to the "second camp". The way Treblinka worked was that the people selected to work there were "broken in" in the main camp. This was where the trains were unloaded, and we sorted through the belongings of the victims. The second camp was the death camp. The victims were sent there, down a path called the pipeline and into the gas chambers where they were killed. From there the bodies were disposed of, in mass graves at first, but at some point during my stay in Treblinka they had begun to burn them instead, a method that left the whole area covered in a thin layer of ash. The SS never sent workers directly from the trains to the death camp, because they realized early on that a person had to become numb to what was going on around them before they would be capable of such work. But they often made stupid choices when picking out new workers for that area, which was thoroughly demonstrated when one of the officers chose me. As if I had ever been able to ignore what was going on around me!

The officer pulled me out of line, and when I hesitated, he hit me over the head with his whip. I yelped and dashed forward to join the others who had been chosen, casting a wide-eyed look back at my companions who were staying behind. Those who went through the fence into the death camp never returned. Once you go through the fence, there is no change of clothes. There is no feast generously left behind by the dead. There are no spoils of war. There is nothing but corpses everywhere you look, and the ashes of the burnt victims on your skin and in your teeth.

We went through the fence reluctantly, but you can't exactly tell an SS officer that you don't want to go; that you don't think you're even capable of doing the work. You go, or you die, and you try not to think about the fact that once your usefulness has expired, you will as well.

Even when there were no transports coming in, which was more often than not that summer, there was always work to be done. Because, you see, the Nazis were trying to clean house a little. Everyone realized pretty early on that they were trying to cover their tracks, but who could stop them? Not us, certainly.

So what did that mean in the death camp? We had the unenviable task of digging up the corpses that had been buried earlier in the mass graves, and moving them over to the fires to be burned. I'm not talking about some nice, sun-bleached bones. I'm talking about half-rotted corpses, in varying stages of decomposition. Some were still recognizable to an extent: this man had blonde hair, this woman was pretty, this child was probably cute before someone smashed his face in. But many were... well, I'll let you imagine it, because it's too horrifying to talk about, even now.

And the stench... when you'd get off duty at the end of the day and you'd find a place to sleep on the barrack floor, you felt so fucking filthy that you wanted to light your skin on fire just so it would stop crawling. There was no escape from the stink of death, or the feel of rotting flesh against your skin.

And on top of that, you can't even imagine how many flies there were. Thousands of them swarming us at all times, laying eggs upon the corpses until you were practically knee-deep in maggots.

And when the transports came in, there were fresh corpses to dispose of. Suddenly I was the one throwing not-quite-dead people into the fires, and listening to them moan and scream with their last breaths.

At one point we received one last transport from Warsaw. Later I would hear from others that these were the last survivors from an uprising that had taken place there. And though these people were quickly transformed from survivors to victims, they spread their story to anyone in the camp that would listen. Escape had been on the minds of everyone, of course, but this inspiration was what was needed to get everyone into gear. With only a few minimal supplies, these men and women had held off the Germans for a month. The Nazis had to burn down the entire ghetto to retrieve everyone. We were all impressed by those who were brave enough to stand up to the Nazis. The idea of an uprising in Treblinka was stronger than ever.

The transport had another effect on me, though. As I was pulling the bodies out of the gas chamber, I saw a few people I had known, or had seen on the streets. They were barely recognizable, since suffocation from the fumes turned everyone into a swollen, bluish-black mass, but occasionally when hoisting a body from the pile there would be that jolt of recognition. At one point I reached out for a woman's body, only to realize that she had been a friend of my mother's. I jerked away from her in surprise, tripping backwards over another corpse and landing on my ass. Of course there was an SS officer standing only a few feet away, and he was immediately upon me, whipping me savagely until I got back on my feet and returned to the pile of corpses.

At the end of that day I felt so sick that I spent an hour behind the barracks, crying so hard that it made me throw up. It was the first time I'd cried since entering Treblinka, but all I could think was that it could have been me, or someone in my family. Yet here I was, still alive and gracelessly disposing of the people I'd once known.

Throughout the year I had kept my head up, though I'm not sure how. I'm not the strongest person on the planet, and I've been known to be a bit sensitive at times... so it's not as if I wasn't bothered by all of this. Every day since I had arrived at Treblinka I was horrified by myself and by my surroundings. At night when I was trying to sleep, I'd keep thinking, "I can't believe I'm doing this. I can't believe this is my life now. What kind of person am I?"

But while I may be weak and sensitive, I'm also extremely tenacious. And just when I started to think that I'd had enough, and should just take the easy way out, rumors of an escape plan started flying around. So I stuck it out.

We only heard bits and pieces of what was going on in the main camp, but what we heard sounded promising. As the prisoner's revolt became better planned out, several men in the main camp broke into the munitions storage and stole some grenades, as well as some guns. Two of the guns were smuggled into our camp, and given to men who know how to shoot. Because communication was difficult between the two camps, it was hard to know exactly what was supposed to happen, but we were assured that those on the other side of the fence had it under control. So we waited.

On August 2nd, the plan came to fruition.

First there was the sound of a gunshot from the main camp, and then the sounds of explosions. A great cheer went up all over the camp, and one of the men on our side shot the SS officers who were guarding us. Then they broke down the gate into the main camp.

Utter chaos. Men are running everywhere, trying to avoid being shot or captured, and there are buildings on fire, and several bodies of guards sprawled here and there on the ground.

I have never been much on fighting, and I don't even know how to shoot a gun, but when I come across the body of one of the guards I hate most, I duck behind him to shield myself from any stray bullets, and steal his gun out of its holster. I figure that even if I can't shoot it properly, it might at least give me a way to defend myself. I tuck it into my belt, and take off running with the rest of the crowd.

There are explosions all around, and more bodies on the ground as I get closer to the front of the camp. Building after building catches on fire, and the grenades are being hurled at any officers that come toward us.

Ahead there is the barbed wire fence, and we must climb over it carefully unless we want to become entangled. It is slow going for most, and it gives the men in the watchtowers enough time to pick many of my fellow prisoners off with their machine guns. I am lucky as I climb over, because either their attention has been drawn to another location, or they are reloading. All I know was that there is a momentary lull in the shooting, and I take that opportunity to scramble up the fence. My hands are cut on the wires as I launch myself over it, and I hear bullets zipping past me, close to my head, but I pay no mind to any of that, and I run off into the woods as fast as I can.

I know I am being pursued. I can hear the dogs in the distance, the shouting, the rattle of the machine guns. I don't care. I just keep going. Nothing will stop me but death itself.


	5. Chapter 5

It took me three months to get to Rouen. Evading the SS was, predictably, rather difficult, and the thought of traveling nearly 2,000 kilometers through Nazi-occupied territory was daunting, but what else was I going to do, go home? There was no "home". My brother was all I had left in the world, and my only goal was to get to where he was. Then I could decide where to go from there.

The first thing I did was run straight north, toward the nearby Bug River, and scrub myself clean. It was a tactical move: the Germans would have dogs out after me, and the only way to keep them from picking up my scent was to travel in the water for a ways. But since I had entered the death factory, all I had wanted to do was get clean, and this was the first opportunity I had. I dunked myself under the surface and floated under the water for a bit, and then used dirt and clay from the bottom to scrub my skin. As I heard the dogs barking in the distance, I thought to myself, "My obsession with cleanliness will literally be the death of me." So I moved on.

Throughout most of the journey I stuck to the woods, emerging at times to steal things I needed from local farmers. Before the war if you had told me that some day I'd support myself by becoming a common thief, I'd have laughed at you. I'd always had such a guilty conscience, and I hated the thought of taking something that was not mine.

But Treblinka had changed me. It was no longer a matter of right or wrong, it was simply survival. Farmers were often low on resources, but did I feel bad for taking from them? Not really. I'd been through worse things than missing a meal for a day, so I figured to hell with them.

If they caught me in their homes and didn't let me take what I wanted, I'd wave my pistol at them. The water had ruined it, and I didn't know how to use it anyway, but they didn't know that so they always complied.

To my knowledge no one ever reported me to the police, or if they did it never caught up with me. I assume that because I looked so dreadful, maybe they had taken pity on me. I was cursed and spat at by several of the people from whom I stole, but nothing ever came of it beyond that. To be honest, the idea of anyone actually being afraid of me was laughable, but I supposed I looked so completely deranged that I was intimidating? Who knows. Either way, I was constantly looking over my shoulder during those months, afraid that someone would be right behind me to drag me back to the Hell I'd escaped.

Despite all that, or perhaps because of it, being on my own was often more terrifying than it was freeing. In the hands of the SS I'd learned to just do as I was told. Follow orders and maybe you'd keep your life. But on the road there was no one to give me any direction. The freedom to make my own decisions was a little overwhelming, and at night I'd have to talk myself out of panic attacks, and remind myself why I was doing this. I didn't realize until I was on my own how much I'd grown accustomed to having someone else make decisions for me. In some crazy way I almost missed it. Obviously I didn't want to go back, but at times it would have been nice to have someone else around to make decisions for me. Do I walk around that village or through it? Should I go north or south? Do I break into that house and look for food? Is it safe? Should I stay on the road, or is that too risky? These decisions I had to make every moment of every day exhausted me.

I slept where I could... under trees, in barns, under houses... whatever looked safest. It was scary walking through the woods and hearing voices from afar, and often the rumble of trucks and tanks on the dirt roads. Sometimes I'd have to hide out for days, or travels miles out of my way just to avoid units of the German army. With my hair slowly growing back I looked a little less like an escaped Jew (if any of these soldiers even knew about the death camps... I wasn't sure) but I didn't have any identification papers, and I knew that if I got caught I'd end up being sent to jail at the very least, or maybe a labor camp, or maybe, maybe I'd just be forced to get on my knees, bow my head, and let them execute me. I had no idea what the consequences would be if I got caught.

So, you know. I tried to avoid that.

I think the worst part was not the fear of dying... not exactly. It was the fear of dying with no one knowing who or where I was.

It was like... I was carrying with me all the memories of the people who had been murdered. I needed to tell someone what had happened in Warsaw, and at Treblinka. I needed someone to know how my mother and father had died. If I was shot in the woods, or sent back somewhere to die, no one would ever know what happened to me.

And if I died there would be no one to mourn me, no one to mourn our family. I would just be some anonymous corpse in the forest, rotting away or being picked apart by scavengers. Somehow that was scarier to me than the thought of dying in the ghetto, or in Treblinka. So I kept going, even when I was too exhausted to move.

It grew colder as the weeks went on, and by November I was trekking though deep snow drifts. It added a great deal of danger, because of course now anyone could track me, but to make matters worse my shoes were wearing out. They hadn't been very warm to begin with, and since I'd escaped Treblinka in August my clothes were also fairly light. I stole a coat from a house somewhere in Germany, but I was never warm enough, and my hands and feet were so cold that I usually could not feel them. And my ears, god. My hat was nothing more than what Americans call a newsboy cap. The wind rushing by my ears made my head ache terribly, and I can't even tell you what I would have done for a hat that covered my ears. The cold was excruciating. There were some days when I kind of hoped someone would catch me, because a jail cell would be warmer, and if I was killed at least I wouldn't be suffering anymore.

Though I still had a long way to go, and the weather was still awful, I wept when I crossed over into France.

It was another couple of weeks before I reached Rouen. Being so close to my destination gave me a renewed sense of purpose, and I grew more anxious to reach the town as the days wore on.

Rouen was the first town I'd entered since my escape, and though many of the buildings had been bombed and the streets were dark due to the blackout, I was amazed at how normal things seemed.

Here was a man smoking a cigarette on his stoop. Here was a woman putting her cat out for the night. There were Germans patrolling the streets, but they were easy enough to avoid if I stuck to the back alleys.

But finding the address I had for Ike (which I had memorized back in Warsaw, just in case) was damn near impossible in the darkness, especially since I had never been to Rouen, and didn't know where I was going. It took me two days of slinking around alleys to find the house I was looking for. Then I couldn't figure out what to do.

I couldn't exactly go knocking upon the door, looking the way I did. I was filthy, half-starved, and my clothes were hardly more than rags at that point. My hair had been growing back, and it was little more than a matted mess under my stained hat. And though my ability to grow facial hair had always been something of a joke, after three months on the road I'd grown a ridiculous-looking, scraggly beard.

The people I had seen while I was hiding out were mostly well-dressed, and even the farmers in and around town looked better than me. If the people Ike was staying with (if he was even there anymore) answered the door, I'd surely be sent away, or arrested. I looked like a madman.

There were some thick evergreen bushes near the door to the house, so I decided to hide in them and wait and see if Ike ever showed up. I slept there that night, huddled against the house for warmth, and in the morning I awoke to the sound of voices nearby. I sat up slowly, trying not to make any noise.

Peeking out from behind the bushes, I saw two men talking a few feet away from me. One of them was tall and had brown hair. He was smoking a cigarette, and looked rather grumpy. When he spoke his voice was softer than I expected. The other was slightly shorter and skinnier, with a very familiar mess of black hair. He had a Polish accent. I stared at him in shock when I realized that this young man was actually my brother.

Seeing him in such a normal setting rattled me. I guess it had never occurred to me that while we were stuck in Poland suffering, he'd be living a relatively normal life. He looked healthy, and he was joking around with the other man. Seeing him so carefree was simultaneously relieving and infuriating. I hadn't expected to feel that way.

And he'd grown up so much since I'd last seen him. He wasn't the child I remembered, and he carried himself with such confidence that I felt I shouldn't even bother him with my filthy, degraded self. I felt ashamed of how I looked, and the kind of person I'd turned into. Suddenly I felt like fleeing instead of approaching him.

The brunette man must have felt my eyes upon him, or something, because before I could make any kind of a move, he turned and looked right at me. He scowled and made his way over to the bushes, which drew Ike's attention as well. As the Frenchman came at me I tried to back away like a pathetic, beaten animal, but he grabbed me by the arm and pulled me to my feet. I stumbled out of the bushes, terrified to be exposed in broad daylight.

"Who are you? Why are you spying on us?" he demanded, gripping my shoulders tight.

In my panic I couldn't think of the right words in French, and I unsuccessfully tried to push him off me, flailing pathetically in his tight grip. Ike was walking slowly toward us, looking confused, and in my desperation I called out his name. He stopped short, and I watched as his face turned white.

"Jesus Christ," he said, "Kyle? Is that you?"

I tried to speak, but no words would come. He moved toward us, pulling the Frenchman's hands off me.

"Let him go, Christophe. This is my brother. This is Kyle," he said thickly.

Christophe eyed me with suspicion, but Ike paid him no attention, and pulled me against him. He was taller than me. My baby brother was taller than me.

"Fucking hell, Kyle, what- what happened to you? Jesus, you're shaking. How did you even get here?"

What could I say? How could I even begin to explain myself? I had no answers for him. I wanted to push him away, worried that I smelled bad, but instead I buried my face against his shoulder and tried not to cry. As much as I wanted to flee, I needed that comfort, the familiarity of him. He kept asking me over and over what happened to me, but I couldn't speak. I just listened to the sound of his heart pounding, and the sound of his voice, which was the same despite the fact that since I'd last seen him he'd transformed from a boy into a man.

Our reunion was cut short when Christophe cleared his throat. Ike pulled away from me, wiping his eyes.

"Not to be a dick," Christophe said, "but if this is your brother then, ah, maybe we should take this little party elsewhere?"

"Yeah," Ike agreed turning back to me, "It's not safe for you to be on the streets like this."

I nodded, because _obviously_ I knew that.

"My place?" Ike asked.

Christophe shook his head, "Mm no, too risky if your parents come home. He can stay with me."

They didn't notice the way my breath hitched when they mentioned Ike's "parents". I realized after a dizzying moment that they were referring to the people who had taken him in. Still, it felt like a punch in the gut.

We followed Christophe back to his place, avoiding the main roads. I suppose he knew when and where the Germans patrolled, because he seemed more at ease than I had been sneaking around town. Or perhaps it was all a front. I realized as we walked through town that my previous behavior probably attracted a lot more attention than someone who looked like they belonged there.

We walked down a back alley, and Christophe unlocked a door that led to a staircase. There was another door to unlock at the top, which led us into a pretty nice apartment. They directed me to a table, and sat down across from me.

"Ok," said Christophe, "Talk."

"Jesus, Christophe, this isn't an interrogation," Ike said, giving him a dirty look, "How did you get here, Kyle? Where are mom and dad?"

I stared at the table, not ready to talk about this yet.

"Can I have something to eat, please? And maybe a bath? Then maybe... maybe I can talk about this. I don't even feel human right now."

"I want to know what happened," Ike insisted.

"Me too," said Christophe, "I need to know if you being here is a security risk."

"Of course it's a security risk, Christophe, he's an 'enemy of the state'. Kyle, come on, tell us what happened. Why do you look, uh... like that?"

"Ike," I started.

"Kyle," he replied, imitating my exasperated tone. It annoyed me more than it should have, maybe because of the familiarity of it.

"You have no idea what I've been through," I said, furious at his pushiness, "I've been- it's taken me three months to get here, and I just want to get clean, and eat a real meal, and maybe sleep in a real fucking bed! I can't- I can't deal with this right now. And how does this guy even know who I am?" I asked, gesturing to Christophe.

"Oh he knows the whole story. We're, uh... friends, I guess? I trust him. And I've told him about you, of course. And mom and dad. And I'd appreciate it if you'd tell me where they are, please."

I buried my head in my hands. "They're dead, Ike," I muttered, "Fuck, everyone- _everyone's_ dead."

A tense silence followed that, and when I finally looked up Ike was sitting motionless, tears pooling in his eyes. He looked like he was struggling to breathe.

"Ike-" I said, but stopped as Christophe abruptly stood up.

"I'll make you something to eat," he said, walking toward the kitchen. I didn't know if he felt sorry for me, or if he just wanted to get away from us for the moment, but I appreciated it either way.

I stood to move to the other side of the table, sitting next to Ike and wrapping my arm around his shoulders. He buried his face against my shoulder and cried. It was strange how this confident young man had transformed back into my little brother in just the blink of an eye. Suddenly I felt the need to take care of him, like I always had.

"I'm sorry," I said, "I shouldn't have told you like that. They- it's been over a year, and so much has happened since then. I've become kind of numb to it, I guess."

"Tell me, Kyle. I want to know everything," he said, his voice muffled as he ran a hand over his face.

"Let him eat first," Christophe called from the kitchen, where he was apparently eavesdropping, "I want to know too, actually."

I figured this Christophe fellow was just being nosy, or maybe just that bored, but I didn't mind waiting. It gave me a moment to collect my thoughts. We sat in silence, and the only sound was Christophe messing around with something on the stove. But Ike was insistent. After a few minutes of tense silence, he'd obviously felt he'd let the subject rest long enough.

"What happened, Kyle?" he asked, pulling away from me.

"Um," I looked around at Christophe, who was coming back toward the table with plates in his hand. "Dad caught Typhoid Fever pretty early on. And mom was shot. So."

"Shot? What for?" Ike asked, looking like he might cry again. Christophe set down plates of scrambled eggs, ham, and bread in front of us.

"Ham, Christophe, really?" Ike asked. Christophe shrugged. I ate without a word. What the hell did I care about keeping Kosher?

"You were saying?" Ike said, his mouth full of egg. Three years apparently hadn't done anything for his table manners.

"Well. There wasn't... I mean... the SS didn't need a reason. They shot whomever they wanted."

"I need you to start from the beginning," Christophe said, pinning me down with an intense stare.

So I did. There were things I left out, but I told them what living in the ghetto was like, and how after my friends and parents were gone, I'd given up and let myself be taken to Treblinka. And Treblinka... well, that was the hardest thing to discuss, so I only gave them the bare minimum of details. But it was enough... they got the idea, anyway.

Ike ended up crying halfway through my story, and when I was done he reached over and pulled me against him again.

"I'm sorry," he said through his tears, "I'm so sorry. I wish I had been there."

"No you don't. And I don't, either."

Christophe stood up, looking pensive, and began to clear the plates from the table. He shuffled back to us awkwardly, looking as though he wanted to help, but wasn't sure how.

"Um," he said, "Do you still want to bathe? I can get that going for you, if you want."

"Yeah, and I'd like to shave this shit off my face, if I can."

He nodded, and walked off, presumably toward the bathroom. Ike sat back in his chair, still crying, but smiling a bit.

"He's so awkward when he's trying to be nice," he said.

"I can hear you!" Christophe called from down the hall.

I smiled as Ike led me toward the bathroom. I was still bothered that he'd had it easy while everyone else was being tortured and slaughtered, but I was also glad for him. Glad that he hadn't seen the things that I had, and glad that he'd made friends with people he could trust.

They left me alone to take my bath, something I hadn't had the luxury of doing in... years, I supposed. In the ghetto we'd bathed in a tub used for laundry, when we had fresh water, and in Treblinka the only real option was running a washcloth over yourself. Soaking in a nice, warm bath was luxuriant enough that it nearly made me weep.

I didn't want to get out of the warm water, so I decided to tackle the mess of hair on my face right there in the tub, with the razor Christophe had loaned me. I was cursing at it when he knocked on the door, and peeked in.

"May I come in?" he asked.

I shrugged. I had no sense of privacy anymore. He entered carrying a pile of clothes, and set them down on the counter.

"Those will be too big for you," he said, "but I figure anything would be better than... that."

He kicked at my dirty pile of rags. "I will find you things that fit when I have the resources to do so."

"Thank you," I said, but I was still scowling at the razor.

He watched me with amusement before leaving me to my struggle.

It took me a while to finish, but I finally did, and rinsing the stray hairs off me, I left the water and got dressed, ignoring the gross ring of scum I'd left around the tub. I felt more human than I had in years.

Ike and Christophe were nowhere to be seen when I exited the bathroom, but I followed the sound of their voices into a closet. It sounded as though Christophe was telling Ike about the scars on my back and arms, a souvenir of being whipped in Treblinka. I supposed Christophe had seen them when he came into the bathroom, but I was irritated that he was telling Ike. As if he needed to know about that.

They were standing on the other side of the closet wall, and I climbed through the hole to join them, giving Christophe a dirty look, which he ignored.

"I can hide you in here," he said, "If you want I could work on finding you transport to England?"

"I couldn't go without Ike," I said, looking around the room.

It was tiny, and looked like a tornado had gone through it. There were shelves lining most of the walls, and messy piles of guns and papers on every surface.

"What is all this?" I asked.

"Um," Ike said.  
"I work with the French resistance," said Christophe, "I use this room to hide incriminating evidence. Which I suppose would include you, now?"

I stared back at him impassively. Then glanced at Ike, who was looking guilty.

"Don't tell me you're in on this, Ike."

"Well, ok," he answered, "Don't be mad at me! We didn't know exactly what the Germans were doing in Poland, but we'd had some knowledge of it, anyway. I wanted to do what I could to help. So yeah, I've been working with the resistance for nearly two years."

"Don't be mad?!" I shouted, "You... You've been deliberately putting yourself in harm's way this whole time! You could have been killed, Ike!"

"Listen! I know none of this compares to what you've been through, but you have no idea what it's been like for me! The whole time I've been here it's just been one awful rumor after another! I heard things about Warsaw and I worried about you, mom, and dad, and I didn't know what to do. I couldn't just sit here and eat pastries and forget about it. So when I met Christophe I knew I had to join him."

I huffed in anger, but I could see his point. Instead of arguing I settled for scowling at him. Christophe rolled his eyes at us.

"Well, this family drama is fun and all, but I have things to do today," he said, "Kyle, I will come back some time this afternoon to check on you. There's a cot there in the corner that you can use. And Ike, I don't really give a fuck what you do as long as you are quiet."

I looked at Ike desperately, not ready to be away from him.

"I'll stay here too," he said.

Christophe left, grumbling to himself, and he shut the closet door behind him. We stared at each other in silence for a moment. Now that we were alone it felt really weird to be together again.

"Well, this is uncomfortable," Ike said.  
"Yeah," I replied, going for the cot in the corner, which was really more of a folding bed.

Ike watched as I set it up, pulling some blankets off a shelf and throwing them on top. Then we stared at each other again. I didn't think it would be so awkward to see him, but we didn't know what to do around each other anymore. The three years we'd been apart had changed us both so much that it was like being around a stranger. There was some part of him that I still knew, and I loved him dearly, but I didn't really know who he was anymore.

"You can... you don't have to stay, you know," I said, hoping that he would anyway, "I mean, I'm just going to sleep for a while. You don't have to be here."

He laughed incredulously.

"'Hey Ike,'" he said, "'I know we haven't seen each other in three years, and I've been tortured and nearly killed, and everyone else in our family is dead, but hey, don't trouble yourself with me.' I mean, are you serious with this shit?"

I shrugged, and climbed onto the bed. He pulled a blanket over me, and then climbed in himself. The bed was very narrow, but we pressed together until we both fit. I expected him to try and talk to me some more, but Ike had always been pretty good at reading my moods. He stayed silent, and I let my exhaustion take over. I was asleep within minutes.


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: If you're enjoying this story, please take a moment to let me know what you think. Most of the reviews I have gotten have been extremely encouraging, but I am occasionally put off by how little people seem to be interested in this. I need to get going on my SPBB fic, so a lack of interest in Black Mirror from my readers might mean I put it aside until SPBB is done. Which will be, like... 4 months from now. Thanks and stuff.

The first two days I was at Christophe's apartment, I did nothing but sleep. I felt like a lazy slob, but really, when was the last time I'd been able to rest? Not in the ghetto, and certainly not in Treblinka or during my escape. I was exhausted.

Ike came and went, and they both checked on me several times, but there was no use in trying to get me out of bed.

I awoke frequently in a panic, because I'd been on alert for danger for so long, but once I realized where I was I'd go right back to sleep. I had terrible dreams though, mostly about Treblinka. The worst, at the time, had me running the gas chambers. I'd lead my parents and Ike into them, telling them everything would be ok, and then I'd sit outside while they were being killed. Afterward I'd haul their bodies out into the graves, but they'd speak to me despite being dead, asking how I could let such a thing happen to them. I'd always want to tell Ike about this dream when he'd come see me, but I thought it might be too much for him.

After a few days of rest, I set about organizing the room in which I was staying. It was so tiny and cramped that Christophe's mess of "incriminating evidence" made it nearly unnavigable.

He didn't ask me to clean it, and frankly I think he was irritated by my meddling, but I had no idea how the hell he managed to find anything in that mess. And laying around in bed doing nothing was starting to get to me. I had to do something. It took me several days, but when I was finished with it everything was arranged in an orderly fashion, making the room look better and the information easier to access.

And then I was bored again.

Christophe's apartment was above a bar which he owned and ran, so the danger of me being discovered was pretty low, but I still had to keep quiet during the day. As such, I spent most days sleeping. At night he'd come visit me, and I was allowed to make myself comfortable in the rest of the apartment, but it wasn't quite enough. With only him and Ike for company, I became restless and lonely, and I guess psychologically it was bad for me. It seemed pointless for me to have survived what I did, and then spend the rest of my days living in a closet, losing my mind.

It was odd that being relatively safe could make me feel so depressed, but it did. As the weeks went on I felt worse and worse. It was like all the horror and sadness that I'd pushed back while I was actually going through these things had finally caught up with me, and since I wasn't able to do much, it was all I could think about. There were days when I couldn't even get out of bed, despite not really being tired, because I felt crippled by the weight of what had happened to me.

I was very glad when Christophe asked me to help with his resistance work.

"How good are you at reading German?" he asked me one night, settling himself on the sofa next to me.

"I'm not fluent, but I know enough to be able to understand the gist of it."

"Well mine's shit. I usually get Ike to help me, but someone just sent me this document, and I'd rather not go traipsing across town with it just to have someone else read it. So, here," he said, shoving a few papers into my hands.

I laughed at his brusqueness as he got up to go do something else, but I was glad to have something to keep me occupied. I knew the real reason he was making me translate things for him was because he knew how bad it was getting for me, but I let him hold onto his facade of not caring. That was just how he was.

Time went on, as it always does, and we eventually had a routine. I slept while he worked, and then he'd stay up with me for a good part of the night. Sometimes we'd analyze data and maps together, but more often than not we'd just sit together, keeping each other company. This was how I ended up having a rather humiliating encounter with him.

Since I'd left the ghetto, I'd had absolutely no sex drive. I think this was pretty common for prisoners in Treblinka, since there were a few Jewish women there who did housework for the Nazis, but very few of the men there ever tried to pursue them.

Since I was living under better circumstances, suddenly I was very interested in sex again.

One evening Christophe and I were sitting upon the sofa, talking, and out of nowhere I leaned over and kissed him. I didn't even think about doing it... it was a stupid impulse. Ike had told me that Christophe was also gay, and so I suppose that had planted the thought in my subconscious. He kissed me back for a moment, and then pulled away, regarding me with a look of distaste. I felt my face heating up as he stared at me, and after a moment he leaned in to kiss me again. Something about it felt off. I pulled away first, this time.

"Hmmm."

"Yeah," I said, "That was... kind of awful, I'm sorry."

"Like kissing a sibling," he agreed, "Not that I would know."

"I just thought – I mean... nevermind," I stammered, feeling humiliated.

"Nah, don't worry about it," he said, "I've been wondering about it myself, but... yeah, no good."

He got up and walked away, and I was left wondering exactly what the "it" he'd been wondering about was. I wasn't about to ask.

I hid out in my room for a few days after that, too embarrassed to face him, though I suppose I had little reason to feel that way. He'd gone on like it was no big deal, but I couldn't help but think that I'd ruined the delicate balance we'd achieved. I was beginning to worry that we'd never break out of this awkwardness, when one evening he came and knocked on my door. He was calling me to dinner, and whatever he'd made smelled delicious.

I joined him in the dining room, and sat at the table, where I waited until he emerged from the kitchen, carrying a perfectly cooked turkey on a platter.

"I know you are Jewish," he said, setting the turkey upon the table, "but I'm treating you to Christmas dinner anyway. This turkey was all I could get, but ah. Yeah."

I was kind of surprised. I had lost track of the date, so I had no idea that it was Christmas, not that it meant much to me. I was happy to have a good meal, anyway, and the bottles of wine he'd brought up from his cellar looked inviting as well. But something seemed wrong with the scenario.

"Don't people usually spend Christmas with their family?" I asked.

"I suppose they do."

"Well. But you're here, with just me, so. Um."

He paused in the middle of slicing a piece of turkey, and just stared blankly at his hands for a moment.

"Well," he said, looking angry, "I don't have a family, and I don't want to talk about this, so just... leave it. Eat your turkey."

I was irritated by his dismissal, but respected his wishes. After all, I knew what it was like to not want to discuss something. I couldn't quite let it go, though.

"Excuse me for caring," I said, picking up my fork.

Christophe sighed and gave me a condescending look.

"This passive-aggressive shit won't work on me, you know. Maybe I'll tell you about it some day, but not now."

I felt worried that I'd made things awkward between us once more, but by the end of dinner we had finished two bottles of wine, and I was pretty damn drunk. Christophe seemed fairly unphased, but he was opening up to me a little anyway, telling me stories of what Rouen was like before the German occupation. It was clear that he did the resistance work out of love for his city more than anything, and it was nice to finally have a better understanding of his motivations. It wasn't often that he really opened up to me.

By the end of the evening our awkward Christmas dinner had somehow cleared the air between us, and by the next day things seemed like they were back to normal.

We had another "feast" on New Years Eve. Or New Years Day, I suppose, since Christophe was running his bar until well after midnight. It hardly mattered to me, since my sleep cycle was such a mess. Usually a new year meant very little to me... after all, it's just a date. A Christian date at that... for Jews the new year had begun back in September, if you wanted to get really technical.

But I remember telling Christophe, after I was well into my cups, that I sincerely hoped that 1944 would be a better year. I mean, not that it could have been much worse than 1943... or 1942, and so on had been, but I had really high hopes for what might come our way.

I've never believed in prayer. I've always believed that you have to make things happen for yourself. And furthermore, at the time I wasn't even sure I believed in God anymore, after what I'd seen and done. But that morning when I went to bed, I found myself praying that things would turn around, and I'd be able to find some kind of happiness in my life. I'd certainly had more than my share of misery.

As the months wore on, I felt rather stupid about this wish, since my life consisted of very little beside hiding out during the day, and chatting with Christophe or Ike in the evenings. I'd had a few guests in my little room in that time; first a British soldier who'd escaped from a labor camp, and then later an American soldier who'd become separated from his unit. I was sympathetic enough to their plight, but my room was cramped enough without other people staying there, and I was glad to see both of them gone.

In March Christophe came to me and told me we'd have some more permanent visitors. Two SOE agents were to come and stay with him to help with the resistance. He was very hesitant about this. Despite his gruff exterior, I knew he was extremely protective of me. None of his men knew I was there, and when they had meetings in his apartment I'd have to hide away, laying silently in my room until his accomplices were gone. So two foreign men staying with him was a big deal.

"What if they discover you?" he asked, looking anxious for the first time since I'd known him.

"Would that be so bad?" I asked. Though I knew it was dangerous, I was excited at the prospect of two other people being in the flat. Interacting with just Christophe and Ike day in and day out was wearing on me.

"Yes, Kyle, that would be bad! How do we know we can trust them? And even if they don't intend to harm you, there's the possibility that they might accidentally let something slip."

"Relax," I said, as if that settled anything.

Christophe just walked away from me, shaking his head. A few weeks later, they were there.

I didn't meet them the first week we were hosting them. I heard them going about their daily business around the apartment, and I could hear bits and pieces of their conversations through the walls, but all I really knew about them was what Christophe told me after they'd gone to bed. They were both blonde, and were pretending they were brothers, though they were not related. One was named Kenny, who was entertaining enough, and the other was Gregory. Christophe had always been a fairly quiet guy, and hardly ever discussed other people with me unless it was to tell me what Ike was up to, but apparently he now had a subject he found interesting, even though he tried to deny it when I'd tease him about it.

Apparently Gregory had very pretty hair. Apparently Gregory was excessively polite until he got upset about something. Apparently Gregory was very intelligent and liked to use his wits to his advantage during arguments. Apparently Gregory was gay and, "do you think he's seeing Kenny since they cuddle at night?"

"I don't know, Christophe."

Ad fucking nauseum.

It was clear he had it bad, and I don't even think he knew how bad he had it.

I met them by accident one night, while Christophe and I were hanging out in the kitchen. Christophe went in for the kill when Gregory came out of the bedroom, but I was relieved, to be honest. Hiding from people outside of the apartment was difficult enough, but this whole sneaking around at night business was too stressful for me to handle.

I got along well with Kenny, but Gregory and I really hit it off, much to Christophe's consternation, I think. I don't know what he was so worried about, since it was obvious to me that Gregory and I were not sexually compatible, if you catch my drift. Maybe Christophe was concerned about hurting my feelings since we hadn't been interested in each other, and suddenly there was someone around with whom he was infatuated? Who knows with Christophe. But we were all walking on eggshells with each other for a while, and it was irritating to me because I seemed to be the only person who saw what was going on. Maybe Kenny did as well, but he never said anything about it, at least not to me.

With two new people around to keep me company, I was very rarely lonely anymore, but I still felt as though something was missing. I was still pretty bored, and moreover I was still trying to wrap my head around what had happened to me. It was odd that six months prior I'd literally been in a life or death situation, and had had everything in the world stripped from me. And now here I was living fairly comfortably, with very few worries other than finding ways to occupy my time. It wasn't until many years later that "survivor's guilt" was recognized as a psychological condition, but in retrospect I'm sure that's what I was dealing with. There were times where everyone else was enjoying themselves, and I had to go spend time alone in my room because I felt uncomfortable. And any time Ike did anything, I had panic attacks over it. At one point I completely flipped out on Christophe because Ike was sick, and he wouldn't let me go to his house and take care of him. Looking back it seems like such an overreaction, because he was right. Going out into the city to take care of my brother's little cold would have been stupid. But at the time it didn't feel that way.

After a few weeks of our new roommates, we'd settled into a routine once again. And once again, that routine was broken. And dear god was I glad it was.

When Christophe told me that they'd very likely be in need of my medical "expertise", I was glad. The resistance had learned of an American airman who'd survived a plane crash a few days prior, and they were going to try and get him to Christophe's apartment so I could look after him until they could get him safely back to England, which the Americans were using as a staging area. Medicine was my calling, and it was important to me to feel needed., so I felt pretty excited that I'd have something to do. But I hadn't anticipated what an impact my new patient might have on my life.

He didn't look like anything special when Gregory and Kenny helped him into my room. In fact, he just looked like a mess. Half-conscious, badly bandaged, and filthy. Well, filth was something I could relate to, at least.

They laid him on the bed as gently as they could, but he was clearly in a great deal of pain.

"Could someone boil some water for me? And get me a towel?" I asked, peeling his singed clothing off him. I had never really considered what it might look like to survive a plane crash, but it didn't look very pleasant.

Apparently some farmer had been taking care of him for a week or so, and she'd tried to bandage him herself, but it was clear that she was no doctor. Removing his bandages revealed that not only had he been burnt in his ordeal, but some of his wounds had become infected. There was also the matter of his leg, which was in terrible shape: broken and healing poorly. I wasn't sure how much I could help him, and I told Gregory as much. He didn't seem too concerned though, and wandered out of the room, leaving just me and the man, and Ike gawking in the corner. Someone brought me the supplies I needed, and I set about washing the man's wounds.

He'd passed out, which was good considering how hard I was scrubbing at the infected areas. I was struggling not to notice how handsome he was, despite the burns.

I must have been blushing, because Ike seemed to know exactly what I was thinking.

"He's pretty good looking, don't you think?"

"What?" I replied angrily.

"You did always like guys with dark hair."

"What are you even talking about? Shut up!"

"I mean, Christophe told me you made a pass at him."

I turned to yell at him, but upon seeing the smirk on his face I decided not to fan the flames. I'm sure my face was bright red, which was enough of a confirmation for him.

"This man is my patient, Ike. Thinking about how attractive he is isn't professional."

He just hummed at me and walked out of the room, leaving me and my very attractive patient alone. I'd have to have a word with Christophe later about discussing my private life with my brother.

Despite the fact that there was already too little space in the room, I set the spare cot up on the opposite wall. There was barely enough room to walk between the two beds, but I hadn't slept in a while, and obviously my bed was occupied at the moment. I sat on the spare bed with hopes of taking a nap, but I was too distracted by my new roommate to relax.

I may or may not have been staring at the man while he slept, wondering who he was and where he came from. I spaced out after a while, and was startled when I realized he was looking back at me. I stammered out an awkward hello in Polish, and then cursed myself when he looked at me like I was insane.

"I must be more out of it than I thought," he said, though he was smiling a bit.

"No. Um. Hi," I said in English, shifting on my bed, "I'm Kyle."

"Kyle hmmm," he replied sleepily, "I'm Stan."

"Oh. Um, nice to meet you?"

He laughed at my awkwardness, and then winced.

"I don't suppose you have any morphine, do you?" he asked, "Or anything like that."

"I asked Christophe... uh, who I guess you haven't met yet, to see if he could get anything, but those kinds of medical supplies are pretty hard to come by. But ah, he's going to try and get a proper doctor in to see you, if he can."

"Proper?"

"I'm a doctor, but I worked mostly in pediatrics before the war. I don't have a lot of experience with... this sort of thing," I said, gesturing to him.

He closed his eyes, and I thought he had fallen asleep when he spoke again.

"Do you think I'll have scars?" he asked, looking genuinely concerned.

"Would that bother you?"

"Well yeah. No one likes scars."

I huffed angrily and settled in on my bed, determined to ignore this attractive stranger who would apparently find the scars on my back and arms repulsive. Not my most logical moment in retrospect, because he had no way of knowing about that, but it hurt nonetheless.

He quietly asked me if he'd said something wrong, but I ignored him, determined to push away whatever I was feeling and finally get some sleep.

I laid awake for a while, overcome with guilt because I'd been so awful to someone who was hurt and afraid. But who had been there to comfort me when I was hurt and afraid? No one. So what if I was being callous to someone who needed what I had never gotten? It was one of those situations in which I was perfectly aware of how much of an asshole I was being, but I felt powerless to change my behavior. Stan quieted down, and I eventually drifted off to sleep.

I awoke some time later to the sound of whimpering nearby. I was momentarily confused, because my bed was in the wrong place, and there shouldn't be anyone else in my little room. But I was wide awake after I turned over and saw Stan in the other bed, thrashing in his sleep. All my childish resentment flew out the window, and I quickly climbed across to his bed and checked him for a fever. He was warm, but not excessively so, and I shook him until he finally woke up, gasping for air and shouting. He looked terrified.

"It's ok," I said, pushing him back down when he tried to sit up, "It was only a dream."

He looked as though he might cry, and I couldn't help but stroke his hair in an awkward attempt to calm him down. He didn't seem to mind.

"I keep – I keep having dreams about the plane crash," he confessed, "So they are just dreams, but Jesus, that really happened."

"Oh. Yes that's... I understand what that's like," I said. He looked up at me curiously, but I looked away, not wanting to delve deeper into it.

After a while his breathing evened out, and I went to move back to my own bed, assured that he would be ok on his own. He caught the bottom of my shirt as I shifted away, and looked up at me shyly.

"Could you, um... Could you stay here with me? In case the nightmares come back?"

I didn't know exactly what he meant... surely he didn't expect me to cuddle up in bed with him, did he? I sat at the edge of his bed and he watched me in confusion. Finally it dawned on him that that was the best he was going to get from me, and the look on his face was sad enough to make me want to beg for his forgiveness. But then he rolled to his side and fell back asleep, and I felt the veil of apathy come over me once more.

It was as though my indifference was a wall around me, and this stupid boy was chipping away at it with his vulnerability. I didn't like it.

I had been watching him sleep for a while when Christophe came and knocked on my door, asking me to have a look at Gregory, who'd been caught in an aerial bombing on his mission that night.

There was a weird tension in the air when I went out to the living room, and I couldn't quite figure out what was going on. Gregory was upset, and Christophe looked guilty, and I decided right then and there not to get caught up in their bullshit. I had enough problems of my own.

Gregory was in pretty bad shape when I got to him. His head and arms were cut and bloody, and his ribs were one massive hematoma. He pushed me away when I tried to treat him, and I was five seconds away from yelling at him as he stalked away when Christophe put a hand on my shoulder.

"Clyde was killed on their mission tonight," he said, "So he's pretty upset right now."

"Oh. Um. Is there anything I can do?"

"I'll take care of it," he said, and walked off toward the bathroom, into which Gregory had disappeared, leaving me alone in the living room with a pile of medical supplies at my feet.

Well thanks, guys.

I gathered up my stuff, and decided to make myself something to eat. I peeked in to see if maybe Stan wanted something as well, but he was still completely passed out, and I felt too awkward about my earlier behavior to wake him up.

I was halfway through preparing a sandwich when I heard Gregory moaning loudly from the bathroom. And he most definitely was not moaning in pain. I finished my sandwich as quickly as I could, and high-tailed it back to my room.

Stan was, predictably, still sleeping. I sat down on the spare bed with a sigh, thoroughly irritated with everyone. Ike was off doing whatever he did, Christophe no longer had any use for me now that his boy-toy was around, Kenny was God knows where, and Stan was sleeping in my bed, taking up precious space in my tiny room. I wanted to sit there and pout, but it wasn't as though there was anyone around to see me pouting, so I just ate my sandwich instead.

Disgruntled and bored, I decided to settle in early for the evening, since it was likely that Stan had a more normal sleep cycle and might need me to care for him during the day. It didn't take me long to fall asleep, since so much had happened that day, and I was mentally and emotionally exhausted. Unfortunately with sleep came the worst dream I've ever had.

I was back in Treblinka, where the majority of my nightmares took place. I was pulling decomposing bodies out of their mass graves to take to the pyres, when suddenly they all came back to life, but not, like properly. They didn't look alive, but they were all moving and speaking anyway. My brother and parents were among the dead, as usual, and before I realized what was happening the whole mass of bodies encircled me, and they pulled at my clothes and limbs. Suddenly I was being pulled down into the pile of the dead, and it was then that I realized that I was dead, too. My skin was greyish, and so rotted that it tore whenever one of the other corpses touched me, and suddenly I couldn't see, because there were maggots where my eyes ought to be. There was a hand on my shoulder, and a soft voice in my ear telling me I'd be ok, and I awoke with a scream, shoving the hand away violently. I was startled when I realized I was in my own room, and someone was laying on the floor by my bed, swearing violently.

I looked to the floor and there was Stan, who I'd apparently shoved into the tiny space between our beds. He was clutching his injured leg and rocking back and forth, with tears pouring down his face.

"Oh, fuck," I said, reaching for him in a panic, "Jesus, shit I'm so sorry!"

He shrugged my hand off when I reached for him, but I was persistent. I don't know if it was from the dream, or from hurting someone who was already in so much pain, but suddenly I found myself crying, too. It was because of that, I suppose, that he allowed me to help him off the floor, and I pulled him onto my bed instead of his.

I kept apologizing over and over, horrified that I'd injured my own patient... especially since he'd been so nice to me, and I'd been so horribly mean to him.

"It's ok," he said, finally, grasping my wrists to stop me from maniacally stroking his hair, "I was just worried about you. You were shouting in your sleep."

He laid down next to me, and wiped the tears off his face.

"Did I say anything... uh... bad?" I asked, because I still didn't want to discuss what had happened to me, and I was afraid this would open up that conversation.  
"I don't know," he said smiling, "I don't speak any Polish."

"Oh. Right."

He sniffed, but didn't seem to mind when I laid down next to him, squishing myself in between him and the wall.

"What were you dreaming about?" he asked, turning his head on the pillow to look at me. I was distracted by how close his face was to mine.

"Nothing," I said, "Don't worry about it."

He sighed loudly and turned to stare at the ceiling, but he didn't pursue the subject. Nor did he move away from me. I found this both promising and terrifying.

"I'm sorry for the way I've been treating you," I blurted out.

He turned to me, looking surprised. "Hm?"

"Well, I mean... it's just – uh."

He smiled at my stammering, and I felt my face go red.

"Look, ok, I'm having nightmares about the plane crash. You're having nightmares about whatever, which you don't feel comfortable discussing, and that's ok. In the meantime, it's just the two of us together. So, you know, we can take care of each other."

I looked at him curiously, wondering what the hell that meant, but he just smiled back at me as if everything had already been decided. I suppose, in a way, that it had.


	7. Chapter 7

Waking up in Stan's arms felt very awkward to me the first few times, but he didn't seem to mind it. Even when I had nightmares that would cause me to scratch and kick at his wounds, he took it in stride. Which isn't to say that he was physically unhurt by it, but he always calmed me down before he allowed me to tend to him. It was nice, but I was frightened by how fast I was falling for him, especially because I wasn't even sure he was gay. He knew I was Jewish, though that was one of the only details about my personal life that I had told him, and I felt like omitting the rest was dishonest. But I was so afraid.

I wasn't sure why, since as his doctor he trusted me with more horrifying things than an unconventional sex life, although that wasn't always by choice. For example, he wasn't able to get to his feet on his own for the first day or two, so I had to assist him in dealing with certainly bodily functions. Nothing builds trust like helping someone squat over a chamber pot. It was disgusting to me, although after living in such filthy conditions in Warsaw and Treblinka I'd gotten over some of my squeamishness with such matters, but poor Stan was humiliated by it. It took him a while to be able to look me in the eye after each time, and in some ways I felt worse about that than the pain he was in.

Christophe teased me once or twice about sneaking peaks at Stan's goodies, but I was determinedly professional about it. I suppose some people might be into such things, but watching someone relieve themselves is just about the least sexual thing I can think of.

On top of the daily discomfort of our situation, I felt afraid for Stan, too, because I felt incapable of dealing with some of his injuries. I was relieved when Christophe sent a doctor more experienced in battle wounds to come sort him out.

I was filled with apprehension at the idea of someone else knowing that I was hiding out there, but Dr. Black hardly glanced at me when he climbed into our tiny room.

"How old are these injuries?" he asked, examining Stan's leg. Dr. Black didn't speak English, and Stan spoke no French, so I translated the question for Stan.

"A little over a week," Stan answered, wincing as Dr. Black prodded at the broken area.

"It seems like a pretty messy fracture," he said to me, "I can set the bone, but there might be other fragments inside that I can't address without surgery. And unfortunately I don't have the proper equipment for that. But if I set it it will heal straight, and maybe the fragments can be removed at a later date."

Though I had anticipated that happening, I felt my stomach lurch at the prospect of being there for it. Setting bones had always made me feel sick.

"You're a doctor too, yes?"

"Yes."

"Can you assist me? It's going to be very painful so I at least need someone to help hold him in place."

"He's going to set the bone," I said to Stan, "And it's probably going to hurt a lot. He wants me to help."

"Please," he said, with fear in his eyes. As much as I hated it, I couldn't abandon him.

"Yeah, ok," I said, "Um, I'll be right back."

I left the closet, and found Gregory loitering in the living room.

"Help me find a wooden spoon or something for Stan to bite down on," I said to him.

"Is he... is the doctor going to do surgery?" he asked, looking a bit green as he got to his feet.

"No, nothing like that, but he's going to set the bone, so..."

He helped me rummage through the kitchen for something appropriate, and pressed a glass of water into my hand for Stan. I was so nervous that I barely looked at him the whole time, but he seemed as frightened as me, and he didn't seem to mind my brusqueness.

Stan was laying with his eyes closed as I went back into the room, and for a moment I thought he had passed out, until he opened his eyes to look at me. I set the glass of water to the side and handed him the spoon.

"You'll want to bite down on this," I said, "It will help."

"I'm scared," he said, taking the spoon from me, "Stay with me, please."

He reached for my hand, and I let him take it. Something about his vulnerability ate at me, and it was as though he was starting to outright shove over the wall around my heart, rather than just chip away at it. Bastard.

The sound of the bone grinding back into the place was so awful that I nearly threw up. But that was nothing compared to the scream Stan gave. I desperately hoped that there was no one at the bar downstairs, or they'd think someone was being murdered in the apartment.

Stan cried as I stroked his hair, and eventually passed out as Dr. Black splinted and bandaged his leg. I admired his steady hands, because despite all I'd seen and done I didn't think I'd ever be able to handle hurting a patient in such a manner, even though it was being done to help him.

He wiped his hands on a towel, and picked up the water that I'd brought in for Stan, drinking it all in one go.

"I'd rather have wine, but I suppose water's sufficient," he said, handing the empty glass back to me. I was grateful to him, but his attitude rubbed me the wrong way. He seemed like he was used to having people wait on him.

"Now, do you think you can handle the rest of it?" he asked, "The burns seem to be healing well and the infections seem to be receding, so as long as you keep everything clean I think he should heal up quite nicely."

"Yes, of course," I said, irritated at being spoken down to.

"Well, I'll leave you to it," he said, smiling and leaving the room.

Gregory came and shut the wall back up, and I was sealed in with Stan once more.

I fell asleep after a while, and I woke up with my face buried in Stan's shoulder. I was pleased and embarrassed when I realized he was stroking my hair.

I sniffed and sat up, and he looked away, blushing.

"How are you feeling?" I asked, rubbing at my eyes.

"Um. Ok," he looked at me, and then grinned sheepishly, "Actually it hurts like a bitch."

"I kind of expected it to. And, you know, even if it heals perfectly, which it probably won't, it'll probably ache for the rest of your life."

"Ah," he said, closing his eyes, "Well that's great."

I immediately felt bad for saying it, but I figured telling him the truth might be more important than sparing his feelings. After all, that was the harsh reality of it. Still, I wondered what that meant for his future.

"What did you do before the war?" I asked.

He looked surprised, probably because I had never asked him any personal questions. Getting to know him seemed too scary to me.

"Well, I did construction work right after high school, but that was only for a year or so before I joined the Air Force. I wanted to go to college, but my parents couldn't afford it."

"What did you want to study?"

"Oh, um, well I've always thought about doing something in the outdoors. Like being a park ranger or something like that. I always felt like something was missing in my life... I grew up in this small town in the mountains, and I never had a lot of friends, but when I felt lonely going out into the woods always made me feel better."

"Tell me," I said, and then realized I was being awfully vague, "Tell me about your home."

And so he did. It was nice to hear about this place that hadn't been ravaged by war. I'd never lived in a small town, and had never really wanted to, but it sounded so peaceful that I started to imagine myself there, living a simpler life where I didn't have to worry about being beaten or killed because of who I was. Of course, I realized that it probably wasn't as simple as that. From the few relatives that I had who'd moved to the US, I'd heard about some of the discrimination they'd faced, but nothing would ever compare to what had happened to me, so there was a small part of me that felt as though a fresh start somewhere else would be the most wonderful thing in the world.

It was when I started to think about moving to wherever Stan ended up and taking care of him forever that I put a halt to my train of thought.

I must have had a funny look on my face, because Stan stopped mid-sentence and asked me if I was ok.

"Fine," I said, not meeting his eyes, "Just thinking."

He sighed and rolled his eyes. It was the first time I'd actually seen him be legitimately annoyed with me.

"I wish you'd talk about... whatever it was that happened to you. I mean, I'm glad that you're asking me things, but I want to know about you, too. Even if it's something awful."

"Look – it's not... You don't get it."

"I just don't understand why you won't tell me," he said, not quite angry.

"What the hell do you care?" I asked, definitely angry.  
"Uh, I don't know if you've noticed this or not, Kyle, but I like you, and I want to get to know you."

"You like me?" I asked, taken aback. I wasn't sure what exactly he meant.

"Well, yeah, I mean you seem like a nice guy. And I want to help you, and I've found that telling other people about my problems helps ease the pain a little."

I stared at him incredulously, still trying to work out what the hell he meant by 'I like you,' but, well...

"You think you can help me? You have no idea! You can't even imagine!"

"If you'd just fucking tell me maybe I'd understand a little better!" he said, finally angry with me.

"Fine! I was forced to live in a ghetto in Warsaw – practically a prison, where hundreds of thousands of people starved to death or were killed by disease, if they weren't outright murdered by the SS. Everyone I knew died in one way or another, including my parents. Then I was sent to a death camp where I helped facilitate the murder of nearly a million people. And I had no choice but to do it, unless I wanted to be killed, too. Can you fix that, Stan? Huh? Does me telling you that change anything? You think just because you've gone through something bad that you understand how I feel, but you don't at all!"

He stared at me for a moment, clearly shell-shocked, and I was surprised when he reached out and pulled me against him. I struggled and tried to push him away, but it was no good. He was determined, and my resolve crumbled, and suddenly I found myself sobbing against his chest.

"I'm sorry," I choked out, though I wasn't sure if I was apologizing for yelling at him, or for losing my composure and making an ass of myself. He didn't seem to care either way. He shushed me and rubbed my back, holding me close against him.

"Don't be sorry," he said, sounding choked up, "_I'm_ sorry. I didn't mean to pressure you like that. I was – you just – you seemed so haunted. I wanted to help. That all – that really happened?"

I nodded against him, too upset to speak.

"Well um – shit."

He held me tight until I began to calm down. I realized that some of his bandages had gotten caught up in my tight grip on his shirt, and I let go, smoothing a hand across his chest in a silent apology.

"I really want to hear about it, when you're up to it," he said, "I mean, there's been rumors of what the Krauts have been doing, but nobody really knows. You can talk to me, if you want, but if I had... I mean, if I'd known I wouldn't have bothered you so much."

"It's not a bother," I said, pulling back and wiping my eyes, "No, I'm lying. It is a bother, but I know you don't mean any harm. I just... I can't talk about it just yet. Especially not... I mean, I barely know you."

He looked kind of sad when I glanced up at his face.

"Well, I'd like to change that," he said, smiling sadly.

I allowed him to dry my face and curled up against his chest, letting the soft murmur of his voice soothe me.

We fell asleep not long after that. I knew the pain in his leg must be wearing him out, and I felt emotionally drained. But I was starting to think that maybe I could actually trust this man.

It must have been some time in the evening when I woke up. At first I wasn't sure what had awoken me, but Stan was laying next to me, staring at the ceiling with wide eyes. It only took me a moment to realize why.

Through the walls we could hear the sounds of Christophe and Gregory having sex, clear as day. They sounded like they were in the dining room, and I decided right then and there that I never wanted to eat off that table again. Gregory was remarkably loud, and I was embarrassed that I was a little turned on by the whole thing. We had drifted apart in our sleep, so there was no way for Stan to notice, but his face was flushed when he turned to look at me.

"Are they, uh..."

"Fucking?" I supplied, and he laughed.

"Well that's, uh... surprising," he said, still glowing red.

"Does it bother you?"

"Other than the fact that I don't want to listen to it? Not... no, not really. I just. Well I guess I didn't think Christophe was like that. Gregory, though..."

I laughed, but I wondered if he'd figured me out as well. If he had, he didn't seem bothered by it, for which I was grateful. I had enough things to worry about.

Things were fairly calm for the next few days. I started to tell Stan more detailed bits and pieces of my experiences, and he always listened with a sympathetic ear. It was cathartic, in a lot of ways, because there was so much that I could never tell Ike, or anyone else. With Ike it was a matter of sparing his feelings, and no one else seemed interested enough to pry for details. Gregory, in particular, seemed to be too wrapped up in his own problems to worry about my own.

"I don't understand Christophe at all," he said to me one afternoon, while Stan was asleep. "I mean, he likes me, he kisses me, we... well, and then he goes back to acting as though I'm some burden he has to deal with."

I sighed, wondering how the hell he could be so dense when he was obviously an intelligent man.

"He likes you, and he's trying to distance himself from you, obviously. And then fighting it becomes too hard, and he caves, but then he gets mad at himself and at you for the whole thing."

"Why would he do that, though?"

"His biggest concern has always been fighting the Germans. So I guess he sees his affection for you as an obstacle. There's nothing you can do but wait it out, really. He's very stubborn."

"I noticed," he said with a wry grin.

There was definitely a part of me that could sympathize with Christophe. After all, I was also trying, and failing, to keep someone I liked from getting to me.

After a few days of laying in bed looking bored, Stan was finally starting to attempt moving about on his own. There were baby steps involved. First was standing on his own, and then he attempted to hobble around our tiny room without any assistance. It was sad to watch his slow attempts, and even sadder when he failed, and needed me to come to his rescue. But still, any progress was good, and he seemed determined not to let his setbacks get to him.

And despite myself, I was growing more and more attached to him. We'd go to sleep at night, curled up together. In the morning he was usually awake before me, and when I opened my eyes I'd often be greeted with a smile, his face just a few inches from mine. I had no idea if he knew how much of an effect he was having on me, but I was slowly opening up to him, and I think that made him happy. But despite all the cuddling and soul-wrenching confessions, it still felt pretty platonic to me. I kept thinking that I should tell him that I was gay just to test the waters, but the opportunity never came up, and I was too afraid to spoil the closeness we'd achieved.

During my time in Rouen the aerial bombings had come and gone, sometimes without causing us any real concern, but sometimes terrifying me out of my wits. Although I knew the Allies were trying to help, it reminded me too much of when Warsaw was bombed by the Germans. Stan and I would usually huddle closer together during the worst of these bombings, but on one particular night it became too terrifying to bear. It started out normally enough: just some booms off in the distance. But then it grew closer and closer, and I began to panic. With good reason, it seemed, because I was starting to wonder about hiding in the cellar when a bomb hit close enough to the building to rip part of the roof off. I screamed and ducked under Stan's arm.

"Holy shit," he said, holding me against him.

I shoved him away, and tried to get the wall panel open so we could go hide downstairs. Christophe had told me time and time again that I had to wait for him to give me an all-clear before I left the closet, but I figured to hell with that. I wasn't going to sit idly by and get blown apart by the soldiers who were supposed to be helping us.

Gregory was on the other side of the wall when I finally removed it, and he looked just as terrified as I was. He helped me haul Stan out of the room, but I insisted upon getting him down the stairs on my own. He was my patient, and I wanted to take care of him myself. Plus I suppose subconsciously I wanted to impress him. I wasn't really thinking clearly at the time.

Christophe was laying out blankets when we got to the cellar, and I helped Stan down to one. Going down two flights of stairs had exhausted him, and he looked sweaty and pale. I sat next to him, accepting the bottle of wine Christophe handed me.

"I think this calls for a celebration!" he said, ignoring the fact that everyone else in the room was currently fearing for their lives.

"A celebration of what, exactly?" Gregory asked.

"I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure this is the start of the Allied invasion. This could all be over soon."

The idea hit me like a ton of bricks. It could all be over, and I could go back to my life. But would I? Could I go back to Warsaw after everything? Could I stay in France? A lot would depend on what Ike decided to do, but I had lived a life of running and hiding for so long, I wasn't even sure I'd know how to go back to a normal life. I felt myself tearing up, but I was broken out of my thought when Stan reached over and pulled me against him. I was shocked when he kissed my forehead.

"Isn't this what you wanted?" he asked me very quietly.

I didn't know what to say, so I just took a hearty swig from the bottle of wine in my hand.

It was eerily silent when we awoke the next morning. Christophe and Gregory were asleep beside us, and Stan was beginning to rouse as well.

"Mm, morning," he said, wiping the sleep from his eyes. He looked like hell.

"Are you hungover?" I asked, brushing his bangs from his eyes. They were getting long, and I wondered if he'd let me cut them.

"A little," he said.

He didn't move for a moment, and I studied his face. His wounds were beginning to heal, and though he had a few scars on his cheeks and neck, he seemed more handsome than ever. He gave me a questioning look, and then grinned sheepishly.

"I have to pee," he said.

I laughed, and helped him get to his feet.

As we made our way upstairs, I peeked out the bar windows, examining the mess in the street. There was rubble everywhere, and I knew that it would upset Christophe when he saw it. Still, we were all alive, and that was something to be grateful for.

The apartment itself had taken some damage, but nothing too terrible. The windows in the bathroom were shattered when I helped Stan into it, and when we got back to our room the roof was patchy, and the whole room smelled like smoke.

"I'm glad we got out of here," Stan said, sitting upon the bed.

He watched as I began to reorder some of the chaos. I could feel his eyes upon me, and it was making me nervous, so I was grateful when Gregory showed up and provided a distraction.

"Oh good," he said, "You're both up here."

"Where else would we be?" Stan asked, and I couldn't tell if he was joking or irritated.

"Oh, nowhere I guess. Christophe's going to be patching the roof, so hopefully it'll be fixed before nightfall."

"Where's Kenny been, anyway?" I asked. His frequent absences seemed ominous for some reason.

"He's dating some girl who works at the bar, so I assume he's been spending all his time with her. You know how exciting new romances are," he said, his face flushing.

"Do I?" I sighed, but he left the room without answering.

Stan was still watching me, so I sat down on the bed next to him. He bumped me gently with his shoulder.

"Why does the idea of the war being over upset you?" he asked me.

"What?" I snapped at him, and immediately felt bad when he winced at my tone.

"Last night. You were upset about the invasion starting. I would have thought you'd be happy about it."

I sat in silence for a moment, trying to figure out how to express how I felt.

"Think of your home," I said finally, "and imagine it had been torn apart by war. Your family is dead. Your home is destroyed. And you've been treated so reprehensibly by the people in your community that it's made you completely lose touch with the person you once were. Could you go back to that? Once you were free, do you think you'd be able to just go back home, and go on with your life like nothing happened?"

I appreciated the long silence that followed that, because I could tell he was thinking about my question. He looked sad when he finally looked at me.

"I don't think I could, actually. I just never thought of it that way."

"Well-" I started, but the words died in my throat when he placed his hand on top of mine.

"It doesn't have to be that way, though," he said, looking nervous, "I mean... you... you could go anywhere, you know? Even, I mean – um."

He gave up on talking, and leaned over to kiss me.

X

A/N: Heh, oh I'm sorry am I leaving you hanging? Um, A. Thank you all so much for the kind reviews. They really do motivate me, so I always encourage them. Even if they're a critique or you just want to say, 'Hey, I like this', please leave feedback. Or. Man I feel like a whore when I write that. B. This chapter seems rushed and ….not so great to me, but today (the 27th) is Holocaust Remembrance Day, so I thought Kyle should at least get a kiss. Until next time!


	8. Chapter 8

Kissing Stan was like kissing no one else. I had a few lovers, but I'd never had one that meant much to me, and that feeling was always mutual. It was usually just for convenience's sake.

But Stan, well, he kissed me like he was trying to share some deep, secret place inside himself. It was as intense as it was sweet, and I was completely breathless when he pulled away.

He searched my face as he leaned back, but his hand was still cupped on my cheek.

"Was that- was that ok?" he asked as his face took on the brightest shade of red I think I'd ever seen.

I laughed, and leaned forward to kiss him again, trying to put as much feeling into it as he had.

"Guess so," he said when I stopped to catch my breath, "I've never kissed a guy before."

"Really?" I asked, surprised. He seemed to know what he was doing.

"Yeah, I've never been brave enough to. At home I dated girls. I always threw up on them if I tried to kiss them, though. I guess that should have been the first clue, huh?"

"You weren't sure if you liked boys?" I asked, leaning up to kiss his cheek. It was like some invisible barrier between us had been lifted.

"Oh, no, I've known for a long time. When I was younger I thought it was just normal curiosity, but when I told the priest at my church he said it was wrong and unnatural. So I dated girls to hide it. That was what felt 'wrong and unnatural' to me, though."

He shrugged and kissed me again, stroking his thumbs gently across my cheeks.

"But," he continued, "You know... I guess. Well, I tried to ignore it. How I felt, I mean. But I never... um. I've never liked anyone as much as I like you, so it was never worth taking the risk. I didn't want to mess it up, though. I thought you might get mad."

"No, that was perfect. You're perfect."

He smiled at that, but he still looked embarrassed.

"Do you, um, think I'm good looking, even though I'm covered in scars?" he asked.

I suppose that a man as attractive as he was must have been used to being praised for his looks all the time. It wasn't really something I could relate to, since I've always been average-looking, at best. Though he had never come across as vain, I suppose his looks had become enough of his identity that his perceived loss of them was a blow to his ego.

I sighed, and proceeded to remove my long-sleeved shirt. I'd taken great pains to never change clothes in front of him, for various reasons, but I felt the need to show him my own scars.

"See these?" I said, exposing my arms and back to him. The scars from the whippings I'd received in Treblinka were clear as day. "Do they change how you feel about me?"

"No I- Where- How did you get them?"

"Treblinka," I said, shrugging my shirt back on, "They bothered me for a while, so I understand how you feel. But once I'd settled in here for a few weeks and began to feel safer, I started to feel better about them. Yeah, they're a reminder of bad things… _horrible_ things. But scars mean you survived something."

"I guess," he said, looking doubtful.

"Well, if it helps at all, I think you're extremely attractive, and I never saw you before you were injured."

"That does help, yeah," he said, smiling and taking my hand in his.

We laid together for a long time after that, mostly just talking, because any time I tried to get a little more adventurous, he would shy away. I suppose it was to be expected, considering the fact that if he'd never kissed a man before, he certainly wouldn't have slept with one either. Hell, I wasn't even sure if he'd ever had sex at all, and the thought of deflowering him was as exciting as it was daunting.

After he'd fallen asleep, his face pressed against my neck, I realized I was a little relieved that he'd been adverse to more physical pursuits. After all, I'd often used sex as simply a way to find comfort and distraction for a little while. I didn't want it to be that way with Stan.

It was some time in the early evening when I awoke to the sound of someone coming into the room. I tried to get up, but Stan was laying on top of me. My arms were half asleep from being pinned under him, so moving him to the side was proving too difficult in my groggy state.

Ike poked his head into the room, and then stopped short.

"Well, well, well," he said, stepping through the door, "What's this?"

"Nothing. Shut up," I said, finally managing to roll Stan to the side. He groaned and settled against the pillow, still sounds asleep.

"Sure looks like nothing," Ike responded, setting a plate on the bed, "Here, I brought you food."

I pulled the plate toward me, steadfastly ignoring the smug smirk that was spreading across Ike's face.

"Guess you thought he was handsome after all," he said, watching as I tucked into the chicken breast he'd brought me.

"Ike, do you really have to do this?"

He watched me eat for a moment, and then glanced at Stan, who was still out cold.

"I just don't want you to get hurt," he said, suddenly looking serious. "I mean, are you guys, like… together?"

"I don't know," I said, sighing, "We're… close. I really… I do care for him. More than I've ever cared for anyone, really. And I think he feels the same way."

"Hm," Ike said, staring at Stan.

"I don't know why it matters to you, anyway," I said. He huffed under his breath.

"Because you're my brother. Because you've been hurt so badly, and I'm afraid for you. I realize you know him better than I do, so I don't have a lot of room to judge, but how do you know he's not just going to mess around with you and then head back to America, completely washing his hands of you?"

"It's not like that at all, Ike. You don't understand."

"I know I don't, and I think that's what bothers me. It's really hard for me to tell how you really feel about things, and you react differently to everything now. I don't think you realize just how much you've changed."

"I'm sorry I'm not the same person I used to be," I said, irritated.

"Don't get passive-aggressive with me. You know I don't mean it that way. The way you react, though, everything you do and think seems to be affected by what you've been through. Like you getting defensive over my concern for you. You always did that a little, but not like this, and it makes me hurt for you. And I sincerely hope that if Stan makes you happy, that he can help you heal, but I just worry that you might rely on him too much for your happiness, and if he leaves you'll just be crushed."

We sat in silence, and I picked at the food on my plate.

"I appreciate your concern," I said, breaking the silence. He nudged me with his shoulder.

"'I appreciate your concern,' really? You used to tell me everything and that…. I mean, I get it. It's not the same. But you don't have to be all closed off like that. Not with me."

We stared at each other in silence for a moment. I looked away first.

"I'm sorry," I said, "I know things are different now, and I don't want them to be. And I know the fact that I haven't told you everything creates a rift between us. I hate it. But there's so much that I can never tell you, because it's too horrifying."

"But you've told Stan," he said.

"Some of it. Certainly not everything. There are things I don't think I will ever be able to speak about. But it's not Stan's family that was massacred, and it's not his home that he saw destroyed. He didn't know me before, so talking about the way these things broke me isn't the same as telling you. You… I think it would hurt you too much to know the worst parts. And because I'm hiding these awful things from you, it makes it hard to share the good things as well. I hate that. I really do. I want things to be ok between us, and I don't know how to achieve that."

"Things are always ok between us."

"I hate you being so serious," I said.

"Yeah well, I hate you being so mopey, but that's the way it is sometimes, isn't it?"  
I sighed and leaned my head against his shoulder.

"I'm just glad you were here this whole time. It's so strange to have come here and found you mostly unchanged, but it's a comfort as well. The thought of finding you was the only thing that kept me alive when I escaped the camp."

"Jesus," he said, staring at his feet.

We both turned and looked as we heard Stan stirring behind us. He opened his eyes and stared at us in confusion.

"What's going on?" he asked, his voice low and rough from sleeping.

"Nothing," Ike said as he rose to his feet, "Just swapping sex tips with Kyle."

"Ike…" I groaned.

"Well, I'll leave you guys to it!" he said, grinning and scampering out of the room.

I sighed heavily, and snuck a glance at Stan. He was staring at the bedspread looking slightly horrified.

"Sorry," I said, "He was just kidding."

"Ok," he replied, "But um. Well. You have done… that, before, I assume?"

"Had sex?"

"Yeah," he said, blushing.

"Yeah."

"With men, I guess?"

"Yes," I said laughing, "I thought we were past that."

He stared at me for a minute, and then looked away again. "I wouldn't know what to do," he said.

"I could show you, you know," I said, "but there's no pressure. You don't have to do anything if you're not comfortable with it."

"It's not… I mean… It's more that I'm afraid it would be bad. Like, you'd think I was stupid, or something."

I laughed, and leaned down to kiss him.

"If you don't do something for the first time, then you'll never do it. I promise I won't think you're stupid."

He smiled, and pulled me against him.


	9. Chapter 9

I feel kind of bad that this chapter is basically "Stan and Kyle hang out in bed for one reason or another," but really, it's not like there's a lot else that they can do. So.

X

Things with Stan moved at a slow but steady pace. It took him days to grow comfortable with the things we were doing together. For a while he'd shy away any time I tried to touch him, but as his apprehension faded we became very familiar with each other's bodies. It was so, so good. None of the previous sexual encounters I'd had with more experienced lovers could even compare to Stan's awkward fumbling under the blankets. I guess caring about someone on that level made a difference in how everything felt. We hadn't even had proper sex yet… I think he was afraid, actually. But what we'd done together was more than enough to keep me happy.

It was frightening to me how quickly I'd fallen in love with him. I wasn't sure if he felt the same way about me, but I knew he wasn't too far off, anyway. Our day to day activities didn't change much; we read books to each other, and talked about our lives. But now our discussions were more and more focused on our futures, what we might do after the war. We hinted to each other that we should stay together, but I think we were both too afraid to outright admit that that was what we wanted. It was alright though… we were building a lot of trust in each other, and I felt safer and happier than I ever had, even before the war.

Ike would come visit me from time to time during this week, and Stan would usually leave the room to give us time alone. I think Stan was always intimidated by him for some reason, although he brushed it off every time I asked him about it. He was probably paranoid because we often spoke in Polish around him, and he thought we were talking about him. Anyway, we were most of the time.

I actually spent a great deal of our visits telling Ike all about Stan, which I think annoyed him to no end. But I knew it made him happy that I was happy. He'd roll his eyes and sigh at me, but he did it with a grin on his face. Anyway, it wasn't like I had much else to talk about.

One evening he surprised me by bringing us dinner earlier than we usually had it. "We're having a Resistance meeting at the apartment tonight," he said, "You guys will need to be quiet."

"Oh," I said, nervously glancing at Stan, "For how long?"

"I don't know," Ike said with a shrug, "I'll come back when it's over to let you know the coast is clear."

He left, and I looked over to Stan, who was attempting to give me a seductive look. He just looked vaguely ill, but I appreciated the effort.

"So if we have to be quiet, I guess that means we shouldn't talk, huh?" he asked.

"Guess so."

"Guess we'll have to occupy ourselves some other way," he said, and leaned over to kiss me.

He pushed me down onto the mattress more forcefully than he ever had before and kissed me until I was breathless. I arched against him, desperately hoping that we might finally fully consummate our relationship, even if we'd have to do so very quietly with Christophe's compatriots in the apartment.

Earlier in the week I'd procured a jar of petroleum jelly after a very humiliating conversation with Christophe. I'd told Stan what it was for when I showed it to him, but he'd blushed and stammered out an excuse. I wasn't going to make him do something he wasn't ready for, but God, I was so, so ready. I wanted to scream my approval when sometime during our heavy petting session Stan reached for the jar.

That night, hidden under the blankets Stan finally worked up enough nerve to push his fingers inside of me. We were really getting into it when seemingly out of nowhere Christophe and Gregory were climbing through the wall into the room, looking tense. We pulled away from each other with a start but except for a cursory glance, they paid us no attention. Christophe muttered an apology to us as he reached over our heads and began to pull guns off the shelf over my bed, handing them off to Gregory.

"What's going on?" I asked, sitting up in the bed. I adjusted the blankets as Stan tried to surreptitiously clean off his hand.

"We have company," Christophe said as he handed guns over to Gregory, "Bosche downstairs."

Christophe muttered instructions to Gregory, who hustled out of the room with the guns in his arms.

Christophe turned to us. "No matter what happens out there, you stay here and don't move."

He walked out and carefully sealed the wall up behind him, making as little noise as possible.

I felt like I was having another bad dream. I couldn't breathe. I had always been in some kind of danger since I'd been at Christophe's apartment, but it had never been in such a concrete way. I was reminded of all the people in the Warsaw ghetto who tried to hide in closets, under beds, in attics, only to be found and shot down on the spot. I was terrified of having the same thing happen to me, just when things were beginning to look up. Stan touched my shoulder and I turned to him, burying my face against his neck as he wrapped his arms around me.

"Please don't let them take me," I whispered against his skin.

He kissed the side of my face and pulled me down to lay with him again. I pressed myself against him as tightly as I could, wanting to be completely consumed by him, the safety he provided. We could hear the thump of hobnail boots coming up the staircase below our room. The sound of my heartbeat was so loud in my ears that I was afraid it would give us away and I tried to concentrate on the smell of Stan's skin to calm myself down, but it didn't work. The man on the staircase pounded on the apartment door, and I could feel the vibrations through the bed.

I held my breath. Stan went stiff underneath me. I think it hadn't occurred to him until that moment what a German entering the apartment might mean. I braced myself, hoping that gunfire wouldn't come next.

The man was shouting and pounding on the door, his curses and threats growing more violent as the minutes wore on. I squeezed my eyes shut, and prayed to God for the first time in years. He hadn't come through for me before, but I was so panicked that I hardly even knew what I was saying. I was aware of only two things: the terrifying noise outside, and Stan, sweet Stan, trying to reassure me without words that everything would be ok.

The banging stopped abruptly. There were voices from the bar downstairs, calling the German soldier back to them. I heard him aim one last kick at the door, and then stomp back down the stairs. Stan slumped back in relief, and I burst into tears.

"What-" Stan began to ask, but I shushed him, pressing my fingers against his lips. There was no way of knowing if we were in the clear yet, and I wasn't about to get killed just because I'd suddenly lost the tenuous control I had over my emotions.

The truth is I had no idea why I was crying. Relief, perhaps, but I think more than that it was the frustration of being in our situation. I was sick of being afraid. I was sick of having to hide. I hated the terror that gripped me any time there was even a possibility of being caught. I hated that people wanted to kill me for no reason other than the fact that I had been born a Jew. I pressed my hand over my mouth, trying to be as quiet as possible, but I couldn't stop crying. Stan moved slowly so the bed wouldn't creak, and tried to dry my face with his free hand. For whatever reason that only made me cry harder. I gave up on trying not to cry, and I guess Stan gave up on trying to get me to stop crying. We just laid there for a while, me silently sobbing into his shoulder, and him gently running his fingers through my hair. How long we stayed that way I don't know, but after a while we heard the sound of people filtering out of the apartment one by one, and then the quiet rumble of Christophe, Gregory, and Ike's voices. It was only when I heard someone walking toward the closet that I realized I was still naked. Stan was too, for that matter. We simultaneously released each other, scrambling to at least have our underwear on before someone saw us.

What a sight we must have made when Ike peeked inside; I was only in boxer shorts, and my face was still wet, puffy and red from crying, and Stan was on the floor, flailing his arms in the air in an attempt to get his shirt over his head.

"Um," Ike said, pausing in uncertainty.

"It's fine," I said, "Come in."

He came in hesitantly, and sat next to me at the foot of the bed.

"Are you ok?" he asked, putting an arm around my shoulders. I tried to wipe the remaining tears from my eyes.

"Fine, yeah."

Ike sighed, and I sighed in return. Stan sat there on the floor, watching us with a look of uncertainty on his face.

"Is Kyle fine?" Ike asked him.

"Um."

"Yeah don't answer that," Ike said, pulling me against him and squeezing me. I thought about pushing him away, but decided against it. Instead I turned my face against his shoulder, and sniffled pathetically. He patted me on the head like a dog, and I pulled away, annoyed.

"Don't worry, Kyle. Things are going to get better," he said.

"Are they?"

"Well who fucking knows?" he said, getting to his feet. "I have to go, though. Out past curfew, and all that. I just wanted to check on you."

"I'm-"

"Fine, yeah, I got that. I'll see you later, ok?"

"Be safe," I said, looking up at him. I was taken aback at how grown up he looked in that moment. He smiled at me.

"Of course. You take care of my brother, Stan, ok?"

"Sure," Stan said. Ike gave him a condescending smile, and left.

Because of his injured leg, Stan was still pretty unsteady on his feet. The wounds on his leg were too prone to infection to cover with a plaster cast, so instead we'd fixed him up with a tight splint that could be easily removed for bathing or when I needed to change his bandages. It wasn't ideal, and I don't think he had enough support from it no matter how I tried to adjust it. He had a tendency to hide how much it hurt him to hobble around on it, and he usually refused my help when I offered it. But he stumbled as he tried to lift himself off the floor, and I knew his leg must have really been hurting him because he smiled sheepishly at me and held his hand up.

I helped him onto the bed, and kneeled on the floor beside it, watching his face as he reclined against the pillows. He was sweaty and pale, and laid very still for a moment with his eyes shut. I brushed his bangs off his forehead and then slowly traced the contours of his face with my fingertips. He kissed them as I ran them across his lips. He then smiled gently and took my hand, lacing our fingers together and resting them both over his heart.

"I think I must have strained my leg when I was looking for my shirt," he said.

"I guess so. Anything I can do?"

"Yeah," he said, "get in bed already."

I carefully climbed over him, squeezing myself into the tiny space between him and the wall. I felt safer there. I was still tense from before, and I felt irritated that I couldn't stop sniffling. I'm sure I looked like shit, too.

"Are you going to sleep?" I asked.

"Nah," he said, though his eyes were still closed, "I'm hungry and I'd like to take a bath. I'm just going to stay here until my leg stops throbbing."

We didn't move for a while, and I thought he had fallen asleep when he spoke again.

"Are you still scared?" he asked.

"Yes," I admitted. I had a tendency to lie to everyone else about my fears, but there was something between the two of us, some kind of bond that made it difficult to lie to him. What's more, I didn't even w_ant_ to, not even to protect myself from becoming too vulnerable. That thought at that moment was what made me realize that I truly loved him. I felt a rush of anxiety, but then Stan was speaking again.

"I know it doesn't really mean much," he said, "but I want you to know that I would die to protect you."

I smiled sadly, and took his hand in mine once more, hoping he didn't notice how I was trembling.

"That's very sweet of you, and it's not that I don't appreciate it, but generally speaking when it comes to the Germans that's kind of how it works whether you want it to or not. If we were caught we'd both be dead before you even had a _chance_ to protect me."

"Well…" he said, but he trailed off there. We could hear Gregory moaning loudly in the next room.

"Um, how about we take a bath or something, now," Stan said.

"Are you sure you can walk?" I asked as he sat up.

"Probably not, but I don't- I can't- This is just too awkward to listen to."

I smiled, and helped him to his feet. He leaned heavily on my shoulder.

"I guess so," I said, "but maybe one of these days we can embarrass them with our own loud, noisy sex."

I'd never seen Stan turn so red.

Our evening together was pretty uneventful. I figured he'd take a bath while I made us something to eat, but he insisted I join him. It was the first time we'd bathed together, but there was nothing really sexual about it. I think on a normal evening being wet and naked together would have been a perfect excuse to get frisky with each other, but I was too emotionally exhausted, and I knew Stan's leg was still hurting. In the end we simply washed each other's hair and backs, and cuddled until the water turned cold. After a quick meal, we collapsed back onto the bed, exhausted from everything that had happened that night. I hoped the rest of the week would be quiet and uneventful, but that was not to be.

I awoke with Stan's hands pushed up under my shirt, pressed right over my heart. He was shifting sleepily against me, and gave me a soft smile when he saw that I was awake.

"Sorry," he said sheepishly as he pulled his hands away. "I was trying to feel for your heartbeat."

I smiled at him and rubbed my foot against his calf. "How's your leg?" I asked.

"Better. It doesn't hurt as much today… I think the bath last night helped."

"That's good," I said, sitting up and stretching. "You should try, like, exercises or something. For your other leg, I mean… since you're compensating for the bad one. If you build more muscle it might help."

"I can feel the bits of bone stuck in there when I move too much. Like, stuck in my muscles. It hurts."

I stared at him in surprise. He'd never mentioned that at all, and for some reason I felt bad that I hadn't known, although how would I?

"Maybe we should get you a cane or something," I suggested.

He scowled in response. "I'd feel like an old man, though."

I shrugged. If he was too proud to use a cane then I guessed he'd just have to deal with the pain. I still felt bad for him, though. We'd talked at length about his outdoor adventures in Colorado. Apparently he liked to climb fourteeners, whatever those were. His climbing days were probably over, though.

He was watching me from his pillow with an indiscernible look on his face, but just as I was about to ask him what he was thinking, there was a knock against the wall.

"Come in," I called, climbing out of bed to pull my trousers on.

Christophe removed the section of wall that kept us safe, and entered the room looking tense. I could tell from the look on his face that I wasn't going to like whatever it was he'd come to tell us.

"Um," he said, staring at the floor.

There was a long pause. He opened and shut his mouth several times, looking around the room, unable to spit out whatever it was he had to say. Then he looked up at me. I'd never seen him look so distraught before, and it unnerved me.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Um, Ike didn't make it home last night."

"…Well where is he?" I asked, hoping he wasn't saying what I thought he was saying.

"Kyle, he's dead. He was caught on the way home and they shot him."

I think at that point I tried to say something, to refute what he was telling me, but suddenly it was like all the air had been sucked from the room. I felt my legs go out, and suddenly both Christophe and Stan were grabbing me and helping me onto the bed.

"That's not- He can't-" I stumbled over my words as Stan pulled me into his arms, "Don't- don't lie to me. Why would you lie about that?" There was no way that after everything, my brother had been taken away from me too. It was impossible. It had to be a sick joke.

He kneeled next to the bed and put his hand on my knee. "I'm sorry, Kyle. I'm so sorry. I wish I was lying."

I sat there in shock, and watched as Christophe fought back tears. I'd never seen him genuinely upset before, and that's when it hit me that he was telling the truth. Ike really was gone.

An inhuman sound tore from my throat as I turned to press my face to Stan's chest. For a moment the only sound in the room was my anguished crying. It was as if someone had literally torn my heart out of my chest. My lungs too, since I couldn't breathe.

Stan held me against him and stroked my hair, and I slowly realized that he was crying too. I think Christophe must have said something, but I was in a place where his voice couldn't reach me. It was like nothing in the world existed outside of my misery.

In books and things like that, people talk about crying themself to sleep. There's some sort of romantic notion attached to it that I had never quite understood. Of course, reality never really played into peoples' romantic notions. Sleep would have at least given me some shelter from my feelings of absolute despair, but such comforting relief never came to me.

Instead it was like a waking nightmare. I was vaguely aware of where I was, but thoughts of my brother consumed me. The thing I couldn't get out of my head was the first time I held him as a baby. I was about five years old at the time, and he was just this tiny little thing that cried if you spoke to loudly. When my mother handed him to me, she told me that as the older brother, it was up to me to look after him and keep him safe. I'd failed them both.


End file.
